


Outward Self-actualisation

by InsaneSociopath



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, I'm so sorry guys, In any other fandom this would be straight up crack, Multi, and yet here it makes perfect sense, oh man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-11-28 01:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneSociopath/pseuds/InsaneSociopath
Summary: Five time Lucifer (accidentally) changed the people around him (sorry Dan. And Ella. and Chloe. And-) (Actually he's not sorry Dan).And one time he was changed by someone else.





	1. An Introduction, of sorts...

**Author's Note:**

> Behold! I wrote a whole multichapter fic and _finished the entire thing before posting any_ for the first time ever.
> 
> Proof reading is for sensible people. Which I am not.  
Will post at least one chapter daily!

Amenadiel has a theory

“We’re self-actualising brother! What we feel, what we believe about ourselves and what we think we deserve… it manifests physically for us! Affects our physiology!”

It is, Lucifer grudgingly admits, a very good theory that neatly explains everything they’ve experienced over the last few years.

Someone makes you feel emotionally vulnerable? Congrats, you’re physically vulnerable around them too now.

Feel unworthy and like you deserve to fall from Grace? Oh look, all your powers are gone and your wings are moulting faster than a teenager leaving a brothel without paying the fee.

Send your mother to another universe thus saving her and all life in your own universe and feel pretty good about yourself for it? Hello new-old feathery monstrosities and bye-bye delightfully useful devil face.

There’s plenty of other examples (Cain, self-hatred induced perma-deviling, the conception of Charlie…), but you get the idea. If you think it, you manifest it. 

There is one small problem with Amenadiel’s theory though.

Your beliefs are only supposed to effect _yourself…_


	2. Being Divine Beyond Measure, is Lucifer's Greatest Treasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lucifer is rescued from Hell and then some stuff happens.

1) Chloe.

Upon returning from hell, Lucifer has only one belief dominating his thoughts:

Chloe is the most magnificent and divine being to have ever graced reality with her existence. 

He thought his return to his blasted kingdom of fire and brimstone was going to be permanent. That he’d never be able to leave lest the lives and souls of everyone he holds dear be placed in too much danger for him to live with. He’d resigned himself to it, to being stuck down here and never seeing any of his friends ever again, never seeing _her_ ever again.

It was truly bloody awful, but what choice did he have?

And then Gabriel had swooped down looking very resigned and extremely put upon and had summarily told him that there was a rota now. That all the archangels had been bullied into adding their names to it. That he was unfortunately the first of his siblings that was now on Hell babysitting duty.

“What!?” Lucifer had spluttered, as Gabriel had urged him off his hellish throne and started brushing ash off of his stained and now-torn Armani for him. 

“Your consort Luci,” Gabriel had sighed back. “She set Amenadiel on us all. Even Michael found himself bodily dragged from the silver city to your Earthly dwelling by our eldest brother. And then she gave us all such a tongue lashing that I half feared it was our father speaking through her! She insisted that we take turns watching over hell from now on. An Earthly week each, on a rota. Except for Azrael of course, who only has to do two day stretches in order to accommodate her soul ferrying work.”

“….What!?” Lucifer had spluttered back again.

“Look, I’ll tell you what Detective Decker told Michael: If Dad was against this, he would have interceded and stopped it by now. We all rather grudgingly gave our word to follow it, so for goodness sake brother, go home to your girl already! I’ll see you in 7 days.”

Gabriel had then proceeded to push him off the throne spire.

* * *

He lands on his balcony with an ashy puff.

When he cautiously pokes his head in through the doors, only silence greets him.

“Hello?” he calls tentatively, stepping out of the hot Californian sun and into the coolness of his penthouse with an anxious glance around.

“Lucifer!”

The voice that squeals his name is pitched high with childish excitement. His head whips round towards it, and not even a second later, a pair of arms crash into his waist and a face mashes into the middle of his chest.

“Spawn!” he gasps in shock as he stumbles back a step under the impact. His own arms come around her back instinctively, an action born more out of necessity to keep them upright than desire to reciprocate the hug. “What are you doing here!? And where’s your mother?”

“We live here now,” Beatrice grins up at him, her head titling back and her chin digging into his sternum. “Mom wanted to be closer to stuff that reminded her of you and wanted to get everything ready for when you came back. Which took forever to organise! Mom had to yell at your brother at lot, and she punched your twin in the nose!”

“Right, well…” he breathes uncertainly, awkwardly patting Beatrice on the head now that they’re not in danger of toppling over. “I’m here now, so if you can point me in the direction of your mother, it would be appreciated.”

The Detective had punched Michael for him!? What by the heavens was going on!?

“She just popped outside to grab some fresh milk for breakfast,” the child babbles, still beaming and clinging to him in an unseemly manner. “We didn’t know Gabriel would be able to send you back so quick so we were gonna eat while we waited. She’ll be back in five minutes though.”

“I thought you were too miniscule and underdeveloped to be left unattended,” Lucifer frowns, trying rather unsuccessfully to extricate himself from her arms. “Your mother has always been rather insistent on that point.”

“I’m thirteen now,” she rolls her eyes at him in a very familiar manner as she finally removes her sticky paws off his person.

“Does that mean you’re finally potty trained?” he teases reflexively rather than admit that he has no idea what “thirteen” means in terms of human growth and development. Old enough to be left unsupervised for small stretches of time apparently, but that’s hardly helpful in the overall picture. His only frame of reference is the spawn herself, and well-

“Obviously, you ass,” Beatrice snorts at him with another eyeroll just as the lift pings and the doors slide open to reveal-

“Beatrice Espinoza-Decker!” Chloe scolds sharply. “What have I said about that kind of language!”

“Not to use it in the hearing of adults until I’m old enough to drink,” the spawn huffs with yet another eyeroll, while his own limbs feel like they’ve frozen up. By dad, she’s beautiful! “But mooom, Lucifer is-!”

Her sentence is cut off by Chloe suddenly gasping, dropping the bag she was holding, and rushing over to him almost fast enough to be labelled as teleporting.

“Lucifer,” she exclaims breathlessly as he once again finds himself barrelled into and trapped by arms wrapping tightly around him. “You’re back!”

Something settles deep in his soul at the sound of her voice as he hugs her back and buries his face in her neck, deliberately this time; something good and right.

He’s home.

He’s home and tears prickle at the corners of his eyes as he breathes in everything about her.

* * *

“Take him in the shower and I’ll put this shopping away,” Beatrice had eventually commanded with all the well-earned imperiousness he’d come to expect from Decker women despite her small stature. “We both love you Lucifer, but you smell like a failed school chemistry experiment that’s been pulled out of a biohazard dumpster and then been left to rot in the boy’s school bathroom for a week.”

“Charming as always offspring,” Lucifer had drawled back with a raised eyebrow.

Chloe had only chuckled at the description though, and had then pulled him by the hand into his ensuite with a knowing smirk. Beatrice had loudly stated that she was going pack an overnight bag and then go downstairs to wait for her Dad to pick up her as he’d been tugged away, which is how he’d come to be where he is now.

Pinned against the back wall of his steaming shower room under the deliciously hot water, Chloe’s entire glorious naked-self pressed against his front, her teeth grazing his neck sensuously as her hands slide rapturously up and down his sides.

Chloe, he would like it to be known, is the most divine being to ever have graced the universe with her existence.

* * *

He says it out loud a few times too once she’s tempted him out and into his bedroom with its fresh sheets and wrung him out better than a wet towel a few times.

Good lord, he’s definitely keeping her.

* * *

There’s an actual rota stuck to the wall by the elevator.

It takes him until mid morning the next day to notice the laminated A3 sheet with it’s hand drawn grid blutacked to the Assyrian stone; Beatrice has not long since returned and left again, heading for school (complete with smug knowing look), three boxes of take away pastries have been scarfed down, and best part of a bottle of champagne has been consumed by the time he finds himself padding around his apartment on silent feet while Chloe dozes with a satisfied smile fixed to her face in his bed.

All 12 of his archangel siblings have their names written in Chloe’s neat but utilitarian handwriting down the right side, and a series of dates have been scrawled in whiteboard pen in the adjacent boxes.

Even Michael’s name is there, August 24th printed in block capitals next to it.

He’d honestly thought he’d be stuck in hell for the rest of eternity. He’d accepted it as his fate, resigned himself to endless misery and loneliness, been prepared to never see anyone he loves ever again.

But trust Chloe to refuse to bow in the face of the adversity and accept unescapable reality.

Trust her to do the impossible and to do so for him.

“Come back to bed babe,” she whispers to him as she glides across the room to him, wrapped loosely in the scarlet silken sheet from the base of the bed. Her lips press sweetly against his cheek as he struggles to tear his eyes away from the impossible grid before him.

“You’re truly are divine dear,” he gasps as he allows her to tug him back towards the cool sheets and the promise of her warm arms.

* * *

Famous bloody last words.

* * *

It happens on the second day of his return to work. Day five of his return to Earth.

A steady stream of excited whispers had followed them the day before as they pushed through the glass doors of the precinct’s entrance and then skipped down the central staircase hand in hand. At first only the usual officers and detectives had dared to come greet him, welcoming him back with grins and handshakes and the occasional slap on the back. Eventually though, the new hires that were meeting him for the first time had also sleuthed up to Chloe’s desk to introduce themselves, drawn in by both his reputation as Chloe’s eccentric civilian partner, and by his usual angelic/devilish magnetism and charisma.

By today though, they all seem to have gotten their fill and returned to their usual routines. Things have gone back to the normal mixed pace day to day happenings, with some people scrambling about with evidence and files and apprehended criminals, while others loiter with bored expressions as they wait for a new case to drop into their hands.

Dan is occasionally glaring at him from behind a mountain of paperwork stacked on his desk, so par for the course there. Ella is bopping her head in the forensic processing lab, the headphone bud in her left ear occasionally visible between the slats of the blinds as she nods along to some unknown music. Michael is leaning on the wall next to the Lieutenant’s office door, eyes closed and one foot tapping-

Wait.

_Michael!? _

What the fuck is _he_ doing here!?

“Chloe,” he questions worriedly as he clears his throat, gripping the file he was flicking through hard enough to begin crumpling it. Feeling magnanimous, he’d pulled half of the report pile to “his” end of the desk and begun to leaf through them, mentally making notes. But now- “Why is my brother over there?”

“Hmm?” Chloe hums back absentmindedly without looking as she tugs another card folder off her half of the to-do stack. “Which one?”

“Michael,” he chokes back, feeling his heart rate rising.

He doesn’t know if it’s the word or the tone in which he says it that makes her snap her head towards him finally, a look of concern furrowing her brow, but her demeanour changes instantly.

“What? Where?” she asks gently as her hand darts out to rest reassuringly on his forearm. He nods silently across the bullpen, swallowing back the sliver of fear trying to worm its way up his throat.

Contrary to Bible and Church induced popular opinion, Lucifer does not in fact, have any particular problem with the majority of his siblings. Sure, there’s a low level of resentment that simmers away in his heart whenever unwanted thoughts of the way they all stood silently back and let it happen as he was tossed from the heavens swirl to the forefront of his mind, but usually he can push away the unpleasant feeling as the looks of fear and horror aimed they’d aimed at their father also push their way to the front of his memories.

But Michael?

Michael was the one to do the tossing.

He was the one to nod without a trace of remorse when Father ordered him thrown out of the city. The one who rendered him beaten and bloody and then dragged him to the edge of the higher realm. The one who dangled him over the precipice for a long second and didn’t even say goodbye as he released him and then watched him scream and cry as he fell and burned, burned, burned. 

It was Michael that he had naively promised to stand with forever, to always have his back, and in return always have his own back guarded. They were twins, identical in looks if not quite in personality. They were supposed to be two halves of the same whole, independent and complete alone but still better together.

But it was Michael who had shrugged and thrown him away at a single word from his father despite their vows and his tears.

“Hey, hey look at me. It’s alright. I’ll go talk to him, find out why he’s lurking,” Chloe smiles softly at him, obviously having noted his distress. The words pull him back to the present, and he nods in acquiescence despite his instincts warning him against letting his love anywhere near his prideful, haughty twin.

Sucking in a deep breath and silently cursing at his hands until the near imperceptible tremor in his fingers stills, he watches with a forcibly neutral expression as the Detective marches with her back straight and her head held high towards to the other angel.

Michael’s eye’s flicker open, and his head tips slightly to one side as Chloe approaches him, his arms uncrossing from his chest and slinking instead into the pockets of the scarlet zip-up hoodie he’s wearing over a lime-green t-shirt (seriously, how is he the only family member with any fashion sense at all!?). Lucifer watches with an undisguised mixture of curiosity and concern as Michael’s shoulders hunch forward as he inaudibly replies to whatever she’s telling him, and then feels his own head cock in confusion when Chloe begins jabbing her pointer finger into his chest and Michael just stands there and takes it with a sheepish look.

Then, without warning, Michael’s eyes flit across the room to meet with his for a long moment, and the air seems to catch in an immutable lump in his throat.

The pressure is gone an instant later though, and he swallows it down as Chloe shoves his brother in the shoulder and hisses something at him. Michael gulps as he tears his eyes away, and then clearly hesitates nervously for a moment before sidling sideways with a nod and hurrying with his head bowed towards Ella’s lab.

The door swings shut behind him, and tension he didn’t know he was holding slowly drops from Lucifer’s shoulders.

“He just wanted to swap his shift in Hell with Raguel’s,” Chloe grumps as she stomps back over to him looking irritated. “I told him he’ll have to bring Raguel with him and then the two of them go speak to Ella as she volunteered to look after the rota. I already explained the rules for shift swapping to him twice before, so he should know better than too show up here pouting. And yet I still have to keep ordering him about.”

“What and he just meekly agreed and went to do your bidding?” Lucifer asks incredulously. “What the bloody hell did you do him to have cowering like a fledging before dad?”

“Well he was being unreasonable, so I had Amenadiel and Maze pin him to the wall, and then let Trixie throw Maze’s knives around in front of him.”

“Wait really?” Lucifer double takes.

“No, of course not silly,” Chloe laughs teasingly. “Do you really think I’d let my daughter threaten an archangel with physical violence? There’s way too much room for accidents to happen in that scenario.”

“Well the little demonling is very good with those blades,” Lucifer mutters back. “She’s had Maze teaching her since she was practically a foetus. She was showing me her butterfly blade-”

“I don’t want to know the details,” Chloe huffs wryly. “I’ll worry less if I remain in blissful ignorance.”

“But seriously,” Lucifer whines playfully, “How did you get my feathery prick of a brethren to do as he’s told? Bribery? Whips and chains? Oooo, did you call him a good boy and tell him he that if he was well behaved for you, he could have a nice reward?” he finishes with, a leer fixed to his face.

“Actually I just told him I’d spoken to your father and that I was simply relaying his messages,” Chloe smirks. “Which is total bullshit of course, but Amenadiel “confirmed” my tale and then reinforced it by informing them all that I’m a miracle. Now they all think I’m Christ come again or whatever, and don’t even ask how high before they jump when I say frog.”

Lucifer’s thoughts grind to a shock induced halt again, before leaping into a mass whirl of awe. Before he’s really registered the movement himself, he’s hauling Chloe closer to him and snogging her face off, pouring every ounce of his devotion into the kiss in lieu of words which would only ever be inadequate.

“Divine,” he eventually breathes against her lips when they pause to gasp in air. “You are truly divine.”

Chloe shudders as the words pass through her, and for a moment, Lucifer imagines that she glows a brilliant white gold.

* * *

Chloe eventually tears herself away from him, half-heartedly reminding him that they’re at work and that heatedly making out in front of the entire precinct is quite a way from professional.

Lucifer lets her go with a mournful sigh, shooting her look that promises much more later, and makes himself wait a full five minutes before he turns around to waggle his eyebrows at an icy-rage glaring Daniel.

* * *

“Babe, can your scratch this damn itch?” Chloe grumbles to him that evening as they’re flaked out on the couch in the penthouse with the TV on. “It’s right between my shoulder blades and I can’t quite reach it properly.”

“You need one of those extendable telescopic back scratchers mom,” Trixie chuckles from the floor where she’s sat between his legs, a half pint tub of chocolate brownie ice-cream clutched in her hand. He pats her on the head affectionately before twisting to face his Detective who until just now, was tucked under his arm leaning against his side.

“Up a bit,” she winces as he slides a warm hand up the back of her soft cotton t-shirt, nails gently scritching. “Half an inch to the left… yeah there,” she moans as he follows her directions and applies a bit more pressure.

Then he frowns and flattens his fingers, feeling out the unexpected texture.

“What?” Chloe grunts as he uses his other arm to grasp her shoulder and turn her so her back is facing him.

“I just need to…” he mumbles as his brow furrows further, hands now bunching her shirt upwards.

“Lucifer you’re making me worried,” she frowns herself, head turning to glance at him over her shoulder.

“Have you ever had problems with that dry rash thing?” Lucifer asks as his fingers rub lightly over the elongated crescents of red, flaky skin. “Exmo or something?”

“You mean eczema?” she replies with growing concern. “Not really, no? Why, what’s on my back?”

“They look like Lucifer’s scars used to Mom,” Beatrice suddenly chips in, kneeling up and leaning her elbows on his thighs so she can see properly.

“When did you see those?” Lucifer startles as he hooks one side of Chloe’s tee over her shoulder to examine the top edge of the right sore patch. “They’ve been gone for years now.”

“You used to break into our house all the time Lucifer,” the spawn drawls with a pointed look. “Even when we lived at Grandma’s, you’d barge in in the middle of the night and curl up to sleep on the couch in just your underwear. I heard you come in quite often and used to watch you from behind my bedroom door.”

“You used to _what_ Lucifer!?” Chloe bites out, turning some more to glare at him.

“I don’t like sleeping in my clothes!” he blurts, deliberately avoiding the issue of why he was regularly sneaking into their house in the first place. “Look more pressing issues right now! You have wing scars! Which are peeling like a stale croissant!”

“Fine, but we _are_ going to talk about your breaking and entering later. Now take some pictures of my back so I can see… actually no, let’s just go to the bathroom and use the mirror.”

“I’ll grab the jumbo first aid and medicine kit and see if there’s any hydrocortisone in it,” Beatrice offers as they all stand, though Lucifer privately believes the problem is a bit beyond the scope of some over the counter rash crème.

“Good thinking Monkey,” the Detective nods encouragingly, though Lucifer thinks that she too, is not particularly optimistic about the effectiveness of such measures.

* * *

Having seen the markings adorning her back for herself and grimaced spectacularly, Chloe gets him to slather both of them in in the crème Beatrice hands her and states that she’ll go see her doctor first thing in the morning. Despite his reservations due to the likelihood of celestial involvement, Lucifer offers to call in a favour and get a dermatologist here within the hour, but Chloe shakes her head and asks if they can just curl back up together and finish the episode of Good Omens she had talked him into watching.

He hesitantly agrees on the condition that she’ll let him keep an eye on them throughout the night; they weren’t there at all this morning, so who knows what else could happen in an equally short amount of time.

Once they’re resettled, now with the offspring’s head lolling in his lap, he tries to lose himself once again in salaciously eyeing up David Tennant and muttering disparaging comments about the boring reality of “holy water”. But no matter how many flexible fantasies he conjures up of Chloe and himself sharing the Scottish actor in their bed, his attention keeps straying back to the strange rash and the way she’s shuffling uncomfortably as the irritation and itching continues.

* * *

Beatrice has only just taken herself to bed after one last concerned look back at them when the skin on her back begins to break open.

“Fuck,” Chloe hisses in pain, her hand gripping his forearm tightly as she rolls her shoulders and dampness spreads down her back.

Lucifer hovers over her, feeling useless but desperate to help anyway. Throwing his own muttered curse in his dad’s direction, he carefully peels his Detective’s t-shirt off. The red, weeping mass that greets him makes him lightheaded with concern.

“Grab some towels and a bowl of clean water babe,” Chloe winces as she paws at the base of one mark and her fingers slide in the mess. “Normally I’d be calling an ambulance right now, but there’s no way this is normal human stuff. We’ll have to make do with bandages and our own intuition.”

“I could call Linda?” he suggests weakly as he reluctantly stands to gather the contents of the first aid kit that Beatrice had left out earlier.

“She’s not that kind of doctor Lucifer,” Chloe sighs with another grimace. “And she has Charlie to think about. She can’t just swan about at all hours for you anymore.”

“Oh actually, I have an idea!” he suddenly grins as a thought occurs to him, pausing in his rummaging through the kit splayed out on the bar. He glances side to side to ensure he’s not going to smack into anything or sending something flying before shrugging his shoulders and calling his wings forth. Thankfully the feathered versions spring into being rather than their leathery devil counterparts, and he hurriedly hooks one towards him and brushes through the down to find a loose feather.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asks as he finds what he’s looking for and quickly pulls the small quill the rest of the way free.

“Angel feathers have the ability to divinely heal,” he explains as he rolls his wings away and hurries back to her side. “I wasn’t exactly around to witness first-hand, but I bet most of Jesus’ so-called healing miracles were actually just judicious application of my siblings’ feathers.”

“So Jesus was real then?”

Nodding as he sits and inspects the slowly weeping wounds again, he grips the down feather gently and begins to move it towards her back.

“Yes he was,” he continues when he pauses before touching her. “He wasn’t the son of god, just a normal human prophet chosen by dad to learn the truth of reality, but he did exist. So did some of the others such as Muhammed [pbuh] from the Islamic texts, but all of them have had their words and deeds warped by time and translation errors and humanity’s deliberate alterations. The Old Testament is perhaps the closest to the original, but even that is far from the truth these days. Now close your eyes and put your hands over them. This is going to be rather blindingly bright.”

And with that, he touches the feather to her back.

* * *

The feather glows brightly and disappears but nothing else happens.

“What the fuck?” Lucifer splutters

* * *

Well nothing happens for almost 30 seconds while they both stare at each other with gormless, anxious expressions.

“That should have worked,” Lucifer mumbles, running a hand back through his hair in agitation. “Feathers will even heal infernal wounds. What the hell is-!?”

He cuts off with a yelp as a pair of blazing white wings erupt from the marks on Chloe’s back and thwack straight into his face.


	3. Of shadows and sneakiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie and Lucifer share a... unique bond.

2) Trixie.

“I’m telling you! It’s Dad meddling in my life again!” Lucifer yells at Amenadiel again, shaking a finger in the air. “He can’t bear to see me happy, so he’s sticking his fingers in my pies again!”

“He’s really not that hands-on brother,” Gabriel huffs, having arrived back from his turn in hell not an hour ago and begged use of one of the penthouse’ guest showers and Lucifer’s walk in closet. Raphael had departed to take over just before then, but had graciously acceded to Lucifer’s demands that she sweep Chloe with her “healing mojo” before leaving. Raphael’s bedside manner has always been atrocious, but she _had_ said that Chloe was perfectly fine and healthy before whisking away to relieve Gabriel.

Unfortunately, she’d also clarified that she meant perfectly fine and healthy for an archangel.

Remarkably (or perhaps not, given her willingness to snuggle the literal biblical devil every night and shamelessly steal food off his breakfast plate in the mornings), Chloe was actually taking the whole thing rather well.

“Honestly, it’s not that bad guys,” she sighs again, crossing her arms. “So I’ve got wings now and I’m probably immune to bullets. Big deal! If anything, this is great considering my job! Much less risk of being stabbed or shot or strangled to death!”

“But we don’t know for sure how your soul has been effected,” Amenadiel intones solemnly. “There is a possibility that you’re no longer mortal at all. You could outlive your friends and your daughter, and everyone you’ve ever known.”

“And Lucifer being spared the agony of watching me age and fade away and die is a bad thing how? I think I almost have more celestial friends than mortal ones these days anyway!”

“And ‘Meni,” Gabriel points out, sweeping his long fringe out his eyes with one hand, “if she’s as angelic as Raphael apparently implied, then she’ll be able to travel between the realms like we do anyway. If one of her mortal friends moves on, she can simply pop up or down for a visit whenever she fancies.”

Amenadiel’s mouth opens and closes a few times. Pauses half open. Closes again.

“Okay fair enough, good point,” the eldest angel eventually shrugs nonchalantly.

“This is insane!” Lucifer whines, throwing his arms upwards huffily. “Dad’s fucking around with us again, and you’re all acting as if it’s a good thing!”

“Who says father is responsible,” Gabriel retorts with a shrug. “No one has seen or heard from him for more than a millennium. Not even me, and I’m supposed to be the messenger and Metatron.”

“Incorrect,” Lucifer grumbles, stomping away from his bar with a glass of amber liquid in hand. “He didn’t speak so much as show, but he _did_ pass a message on to me about mum’s escape when I died from Malcom’s bullet to the stomach back in 2016.”

“You actually died from that!?” Beatrice suddenly splutters unhappily from right next to him.

“Stars above child!” Lucifer yelps in surprise. “Where did you come from!?”

“I just walked from over there?” she shrugs with a confused glance. “But you actually _did_ die when you got shot!?”

“Well I got better,” Lucifer shrugs awkwardly. “I was only dead for about a minute before Dad resurrected me.”

“You dumb asshole!” the spawn growls as she punches him in the arm. “Don’t do that ever again!”

“Language Trixie!” Chloe groans with exasperation. “Or I’ll let your dad make good on his threat of soap!”

“The language she’s speaking is English dear,” Lucifer smirks at the Detective as he glances down at the offspring.

“And for that sarky comment,” Chloe scowls at him, “you can take her to school for me. I’m going back to the gymnasium downstairs to practice keeping these wings tucked away some more. Gabriel, go with Lucifer and make sure he behaves.”

“I’ll tell you were mom hid your weed rolling box if you let me drive?” Beatrice whispers to him while he makes a great show of pouting and complaining.

“Deal,” Lucifer winks back as he followers down the hall to her bedroom to ensure she’s got her bag and gym gear.

* * *

“Clutch down and ease into third around this corner,” he instructs calmly as they coast sedately through the suburbs towards the spawn’s middle school. “Lights are changing, put your foot down and you’ll make it!”

“I got it!” she beams back without taking her eyes off the road. On the other side of him, Gabriel frowns disparagingly.

“I have not spent much time on Earth in the last 2000 years brother, but even I am sure that the amber light means prepare to stop, not speed up.”

“Exactly Gabe,” Lucifer smirks. “You _haven’t_ been here long enough to know what the lights truly mean.”

“Hey look it’s Davy!” Beatrice waves as they near a lone boy walking along the pavement -sidewalk, he means sidewalk. “He’s my best mate after Maze. He’s in the year above me, but he’s not a ‘lil bitch about tiny age gaps like most people at school.”

“Hello Davy!” Lucifer shouts over his shoulder with a cackle as they pass. The boy stops and stares at them gobsmacked, which only makes Lucifer laugh harder and Gabriel frown more.

* * *

“You have your lunch money demonling?”

Beatrice nods with a smirk, patting the top pocket on her deep purple blazer where he knows she has a few hundred dollars rolled up.

“Knife secure in your boot?”

“And another strapped to my bicep just in case.”

“Excellent. And what do we do if we spot a bully?”

“Don’t get caught punishing them or mom will find out and ruin our evenings for a week by grounding us both.”

“Last thing-”

“-Free will, consent, karma. I know Satan,” Beatrice snorts. “You were gone 2 years, not 200. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Yes well,” Lucifer clears his throat self-consciously. “I’m glad to see you’ve gained some fashion sense in my absence as well. Loving the outfit dear.”

“Well someone had to uphold the Morningstar standards while you were gone old man,” she sniggers. “Mum still doesn’t know you left me a bank account with a few million dollars in it. I’ve only used it occasionally, but I have used it.”

“I have taught you well young Padawan,” he drawls salaciously.

“I think you’ll find that Maze did most of the teaching actually!” she shouts back as she skips nimbly backwards up the stairs to the school’s front doors.

“She’s a cheeky imp!” he protests loudly to Gabriel as his younger brother stares at him disbelieving. “And don’t even think about snitching on me to her mother,” he tells him sternly, flashing his hell eyes in warning.

“Oh I’m not that stupid,” Gabriel promises, hands raised in surrender.

* * *

Back at the penthouse, he finds Chloe flopped face down on his bed, her serenely glowing wings flopped out either side of her.

Noticing that Amenadiel has left, Gabriel mumbles something about Ella and Michael and shuffles back into the elevator. Lucifer is therefore left alone with his Detective, and he’s oddly nervous about that right now.

She’s basically changed species and now has _wings._

“You get Trixie there okay?” she mumbles into his pillow when he cautiously perches on the edge of the bed.

“Our arrival was safe and timely,” he nods. And it’s true; Beatrice _is_ a very good driver, and they _had_ arrived plenty early enough.

“Good. She adores you, you know?”

“I should hope so!” he grins back. “I have it on very good authority that I’m quite adorable after all.”

“Come here,” she smiles at him, her head turning to peek up at him. “I called in sick to work so I have the day off. We don’t have an active case anyway, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to go sit around and do paperwork at the precinct until I’ve worked out how to stop these new feathery limbs from popping into existence at random.”

“Sure, I’ll _come_,” he licks his lips with an eyebrow waggle, shrugging out of his suit jacket and kicking his leather shoes off. Wiggling happily up against her side under her right wing, he nudges the underside of her arm with his head until she chuckles at him and cards her hand into the back of his hair.

“You’re worse than a cat,” she snorts fondly as he rumbles in appreciation.

“Cats are heinous smelly beasts,” he complains as he tips his head up to capture her lips chastely. “Dreadful creatures. All claws and shedding fur and un-earnt arrogance.”

“So like I said, you’re worse than a cat,” Chloe repeats with a wicked grin.

“You’re lucky I love you,” he growls playfully.

Then he sinks one hand into the soft downy feathers of the wing covering him and wriggles his fingers, chuckling evilly when her eyes roll upwards and she full body shivers in pleasure.

* * *

“Lucifer!” Beatrice crows happily as she jogs down the steps at 3:35pm, the boy from this morning following behind her slowly with wide eyes. “I thought Mom was gonna pick me up?”

“Nope,” he pops, eyeing the lurking teenager suspiciously. “Your mother is still grumbling at her new feathers. She’s thinks she’s got them to behave, but she decided to give it another a few hours to be sure before going anywhere public.”

“Oh sweet. Can Davey come over for dinner? His moms say it’s okay so long as you agree. He’s got them on the phone still if you want to confirm.”

“Erm,” he says wearily, eying the still bug-eyed youth standing behind her shoulder. “I’m not sure your mother is-”

“It’s fine,” she interrupts him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I already told him about all the celestial stuff last year after he saw Maze’s other face by accident. I got her to scare the shit out of Jimmy Barnes when he was picking on freshmen, me included.”

“Right, okay then,” he claps, his mind made up. “Spawn two, hand me your cell so I can be sure you’re not having me on.”

* * *

He texts Chloe to forewarn her of their nervous guest while Beatrice expertly guides them along the freeway. The reply comes not to his phone, but to the demonling’s and simply says _Tell Lucifer to stop texting and driving. Ordering pizza to feed 4 😊 x_

He’s tempted to reply with _I’m not driving,_ but that invites too many questions. Hopefully she would assume that they were simply stationary at the time, or had not left the school yet, but… but that’s a best-case scenario. If she _did<.i> ask who was driving...___

Well, Lucifer isn’t about to start lying now, even to save his own arse.

“Mr Devil Morningstar sir,” the kid squeezed in next to him then stutters anxiously, breaking him away from his contemplation of sinfully delicious punishments (And he’s really going to have to start keeping a four seater car at LUX if he keeps having to go on school runs, honestly. Three crammed into the front seats of the ‘Vette twice in one day!?).

“You can call me Lucifer, spawnlette,” he leers, causing the boy to blanche some more, before, surprisingly, the kid sucks in a breath and seems to steel himself.

“Mr Lucifer, I would appreciate it very much if you would also teach me drive.”

“In exchange for…?” he draws out with a look.

“Trixie says I should offer you a favour to be called on at your pleasure,” snack-size swallows. “But she also said,” he clearly hastens to add, “that I should add some basic conditions to it and not leave it entirely open ended.”

“Are you giving away our secrets to the common plebeians now darling?” Lucifer turns to ask her with mock outrage.

“Nah, just training my right-hand man up for when I overthrow you and claim your mortal empire,” she deadpans back, zipping around a slow-moving lorry with practiced ease before gliding onto the exit slipway.

“Fair enough,” he shrugs, mildly impressed. “Lay out your damnable conditions then nibblet, and then we’ll see how good at negotiation you are.”

* * *

Davy already seems to be acquainted with the Detective when the elevator dings out their return. They smile at each other familiarly as Beatrice begins her usual babbling account of what her day at school consisted of. Lucifer notes, with some amusement, that some of the details are being skipped over compared to what he was told on the drive back here.

There’s no mention for instance, of how she and Davy had surreptitiously swapped the American Flag in the classroom of one particular teacher for a pride flag after rumours started circulating about how she was giving lower grades to anyone in school who was openly queer.

“I swear she gets more sneaky and sly every time I blink,” Lucifer sighs half an hour later, arms wrapping around Chloe’s middle from behind and his nose burying into her hair. The two terror twinlette’s as he’s mentally decided to label them, have disappeared down the short hall to Beatrice’s bedroom.

“And who’s fault is that?” she chuckles at him, patting his wrist. “You and Maze have been around more than half her life now; you’ve had quite the impact on her personality.”

“Are you sure she’s not secretly a mini demon ninja?” he grins against the back of her head.

“Well, I did find a copy of the Satanic Bible in her room about six months ago,” Chloe muses. “I only ever go in there to collect her washing basket these days ya know? She’s old enough to have earnt that level of privacy, but she’d just left it on the end of her bed with a bookmark in the back, like she wanted me to find it.”

“There’s a whole chapter about sex in there by the way,” Lucifer laughs.

“Sweetie, her best friend is an actual demon from hell,” she snorts back at him, rotating in his arms so she can face him and hook her own up around the back of his neck. “I gave up trying to regulate what media she consumes when she was eleven. I just make sure to remind her about other people’s boundaries and respecting her own body occasionally. She’s a good kid, even if she does have a frankly disturbing amount of knowledge about BDSM etiquette for a middle schooler.”

“She definitely is a miniature demon ninja then,” he smiles warmly before closing the distance between their lips.

* * *

What was it that he said about famous last words?

* * *

“Honestly, if Davy’s parents ever find out how much I’m allowing Trixie to corrupt him…” Chloe shakes her head as the lift doors shut and transport to the two women and their son back down to the parking garage under the building. “They’re barely teenagers and they already know more self-defence than most of our co-workers. Not to mention their joint fascination with... the occult, I suppose I could call it.”

“He seems like a bit of a pushover, but I suppose he’s okay,” Lucifer drawls, leaning back against the penthouse bar with his ankles crossed and a tumbler of scotch cradled in one hand. He’s shed his jacket for the evening and rolled up the sleeves of his pale pink shirt, his navy waistcoat still fully done up except got the requisite bottom button. “He needs a haircut even more badly than Gabriel though. How does he see where he’s going with all that untamed fluff in his eyes?”

“If he’s willingly hanging around with Trixie and hasn’t run off yet, then I’m pretty sure he’s not actually a pushover,” She huffs wryly at him, the corner of her lip curling up slightly. “I’m not about to stop her from being her authentic self no matter how odd I find it, but she has scared off an alarming number of her old friends in the past couple of years. As for his hair. Well not everyone can be as effortlessly stylish as you Lucifer.”

“To damn right they can’t be; I don’t want too much competition for your affections,” he leers, beckoning her closer with his free hand.

She sways over with exaggerated movements, making the overly suggestive face he was trying to maintain crack with amusement.

“Oh I wouldn’t worry,” she whispers against his neck as she slowly presses up against him. “I’m a one devil only kinda gal.”

“Care to prove your devotion?” he rumbles, downing the last inch of his drink with one smooth swallow before letting the back of his hand stroke down over her side, the edge of his palm rippling over-

“Ugh, get a room you two,” Beatrice whines an inch away from his ear.

“Trixie!” Chloe yelps as he starts in surprise himself. “Where did you come from?” she blushes as she hastily stands back upright and straightens her clothes.

“My room obviously Mom,” the spawn rolls her eyes as she too steps back.

“Oi, watch your tone young lady,” Chloe reprimands lightly before planting an affectionate kiss on the side of the girl’s curls. “But I will say that we’re sorry for being overly amorous in the main living area while we knew you were home.”

“We will, will we?” Lucifer harrumphs, crossing one arm over his chest so he can straighten the rolled cuff of his shirt. “This _is_ my building, even if all our names are on the lease these days.”

“Yes, we will,” Chloe repeats pointedly, giving him what he has come to term _the look._

“Fine,” he huffs, giving in easily. “But I want to know how she snuck up without alerting either of us first. We both have enhanced senses now, and I have eons of experience using them.”

“Yeah, I didn’t hear you either actually?” his Detective questions, glancing over at her daughter.

“I-” Beatrice starts, only to pull an unreadable expression and pause.

“Youuuu?” Lucifer draws out with an impatient gesture when she simply continues staring at them mutely.

“I… don’t actually know?” she finally replies tentatively, looking worried. “I just- I was stood by the hallway entrance and I saw you two getting handsy and I thought it would be funny if I could whisper straight into Luci’s ear and make him jump, and then… I was just- here? Doing that?”

“Ah, what now?” Lucifer eventually gabbles into the tense silence.


	4. The "me" is in the detail, Daniel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some times your jokes can have unexpected Daniel shaped consequences

3) Daniel.

“Last step; close your eyes and concentrate on the tug,” Lucifer instructs, standing in perfect stillness in front of the spawn. “Now follow it.”

There’s barely any sensation for him to detect, sound of or otherwise, but before his eyes, Beatrice fades into the shadows behind her and instantaneously reappears across the room in a rush. Her irises seep back into their normal warm honey brown as she steps back into the light, the black that had swallowed them melting away.

Lucifer knows of only one demon with a similar ability, and Bravdros has always creeped him out. Slimy little suck up with zero common sense and too many eyes.

“Okay yes, definitely demonic shadow crawling,” he grimaces.

“Oh fucking hell,” Chloe sighs from beside him. “Your dad absolutely cannot find out about this Trixie.”

* * *

New Beatrice-related crisis aside, Chloe decides she’s got enough of a grip on her suddenly changed (again!) reality to return to work the next morning. Lucifer therefore finds himself awoken at what feels like the crack of dawn when she slides out of his arms and shuffles around the bed to get dressed and ready.

“S’too early,” he groans after peeking at the cheap silver alarm clock Chloe had plonked on his bedside table at some point while he was “away”.

“It’s alright babe,” she yawns, leaning over to kiss his brow. “Go back to sleep and meet me at work later. I’ll call you if we catch a crime scene before then.”

“K’,” he mumbles with a smile. “Love you.”

“Love you too Lucifer.”

* * *

“Lucifer. Lucifer wake up.”

“z’up?” he mumbles, swiping at the finger insistently prodding his nose.

Slowly, he cracks open his eyes and find Beatrice sprawled atop the cover next to him, one hand poised to stab him in the face again.

“At last, he returns to the land of consciousness,” she intones in a fair imitation of his accent (much better than her mother’s attempts at least, though that’s not saying a lot).

“Why aren’t you at spawn prison?” he grumbles through a yawn.

“Mom said I shouldn’t go to school until I’m sure I’m not gonna shadow crawl by accident again. So she called me in sick; said I’d caught the same fake illness from her that she told her boss she had yesterday.”

“Fair enough,” he rumbles back, pawing at the sleep grit in his eyes and no doubt smudging his leftover eyeliner horrendously. “M’ going back to sleep now though.”

“But I want a cooked breakfast!” she whines at him, trying to poke his cheek again. He catches her hand before she manages, and growls at her sub vocally, making her giggle like the tiny child he first remembers meeting.

“Fine, but you’ll owe me midget,”

“Usual terms and you’ve got yourself a deal Satan.”

* * *

He flows into the precinct just before noon, planning on kidnapping his partner and taking her for a nice low key spot of lunch. Perhaps at that nice new French hole in wall on Tuscany Street? Well, it’s not _that_ new anymore he supposes, given that it had opened before his recent stay in hell and thus more than two Earth years ago,

But like all nice plans, a yard stick is poked through the spokes of its wheels before it’s even really started turning. 

Daniel is waiting for him with his arms crossed and a scowl at the base of the central staircase.

“Lucifer we need to talk,” the Detective growls at him, jerking his head towards the doors of the nearest interrogation room. 

“We do? What about?” Lucifer breezes back, keeping his tone light and unconcerned just because he knows it riles Daniel up.

“Shut up and just follow me.”

Sighing dramatically at the brusque impoliteness of it all, Lucifer decides he will magnanimously heed the Douche’s… request, and straightens his cuffs with precise tugs as he tails the other man into the smaller room. The door swings shut behind them with a faint squeak and a wuff of air.

“Sit down,” Daniel commands roughly, pointing at the side of the table reserved for suspects. Raising an eyebrow, Lucifer shoots him a disparaging look and instead slowly sits in his usual seat on the left of the integrator’s side.

“Ass,” Daniel sneers lowly at him as he kicks the right hand side further away and then throws himself into it roughly, arms still crossed. “Why can’t you ever just do as you’re asked?”

“As the Devil, I have this little thing I take very seriously. It’s called free will? No? It’s about the freedom to make your own choices Daniel, kind of a big deal. Almost caused a war in heaven a few eons ago.”

“Will you just _stop!_” Daniel yells, slamming his palm down hard on the metal table. “For once in your miserable life, just _drop_ the fucking metaphors!”

“Hard to do when there’s no metaphor to drop,” he sighs back as he leans back in his seat and scrubs a hand across his brow wearily. Normally he likes a good round of _wind up the douche,_ but at this point he’s honestly just sick and tired of Daniel’s unending, malicious rejection of him. 

There’d been a few months, back when Daniel had started dating first his mum and then actual Charlotte, when Lucifer thought they were beginning to get over their animosity and becoming something approximating friends. But then Cain ended Charlotte’s life and three years later, Daniel is still apparently holding him responsible. Even vanishing off the face of the Earth for two years doesn’t seem to have mellowed the man’s opinion of him at all.

If anything, it seems to have rather strongly worsened it actually.

“And this is exactly why I called you in here,” Daniel hisses at him, face contorted with distain. “I want you out of that penthouse until I’ve made alternative living arrangements for Trixie. You’re an unstable, untrustworthy, clinically insane liability, and I won’t have you anywhere near my daughter. It was bad enough when Chloe moved the two of them into your glorified whorehouse without you there. Now you’re back from whatever hellhole you crawled into, I want you gone until they’re out.”

Lucifer feels his infamous rage building at the edge of his mind, white hot and unbanked.

“No,” he spits as the light seems to dim around them. “No, I don’t think I’ll do that Daniel.”

“Well tough shit,” Daniel snarls back, furiously leaning forward. “It’s not-”

Lucifer stands and darts forward suddenly, causing Daniel to cower back in surprised horror.

“Now you listen here Espinoza, and you listen well,” he seethes calmly. “If Chloe and Beatrice choose to live with me, then that is their prerogative. It is _their_ choice, and you won’t even _attempt_ to take that away from them. Unlike you, they both know _exactly_ who I am, and they accept me anyway. I’m well aware that I don’t deserve their love and devotion, but it’s not up to me to decide whether they give it to me or not. And they’re _everything_ to me. You though? You’re _nothing_ compared to them. And you never will be until you learn to accept others _as they are_ instead of trying to force them into the neat little boxes _you_ designed.”

Daniel gulps and nods frantically, his whole body rigid with terror and his hands white-knuckle griping the edge of his seat.

“Get out,” Lucifer hisses as he finally steps back, and the lights brighten again. 

Looking as pale as a ghoul, Daniel hastily does just that.

* * *

It takes him best part of a minute to calm himself down.

Eventually he takes in a deep breath and releases it slowly, finally managing to make himself unclench his fists.

Which when he notices the odd scattered patches of devil-skin visible on them.

“Oh bloody fucking arsewank tithole,” he curses eloquently at himself as he glares at the slithers of red flesh surrounding the fiery eyes staring back at him from his reflection in the room’s one way mirror. 

No wonder Daniel looked like he’d seen a ghost; given half a chance, the man probably would have _become_ one just so he could sink through his chair and the floor under it.

* * *

“Darling I realise that completing paperwork is your deepest passion in life, but I may have caused a tincey wincey situation that will likely benefit from your attention.”

Chloe looks up from her desk with a deadpan expression and then glances around the room with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing looks to be on fire, and no-one is screaming in terror…” she muses suspiciously, now squinting up at him as he squirms.

He swallows and tries to summon the right words to break the news gently.

“I accidentally lost my temper and showed your ex-husband my devil face,” he blurts with a self-recriminating internal wince. “No matter though, I’m sure it will be fine right! Linda! We can get Linda to talk to him! Linda’s good at talking to new celestial insiders! You said she handled Ella like a champ!”

“You _showed Dan your Devil face!?” _Chloe interrupts him hysterically. “Are you _insane!?” _ she hisses.

“It was an accident!” he cries in high pitch desperation. “He was being all douchey and threatening to take Beatrice away because you didn’t move out of LUX when I came back! I got a little mad and lost control without realising!”

“Fine. Fine!” Chloe blurts, pinching her brow with one hand and holding the palm of the other towards him. “We can deal with this. Hey, what’s one more freaked out mortal right? It’s not as if he’ll try to poison you and perform an exorcism or banishment like I did? Probably?”

"You got over it eventually?" Lucifer meekly consoles. Tries to console.

"Yes! Totally fine!" Chloe screeches louder and with increasing anger. "Sure! Dan freaking out is exactly what I need on top of having to bully arch angels into rescuing you, becoming a pseudo possibly-not pseudo arch angel myself! And oh yeah! _My teenage daughter becoming part demon and gaining the ability to teleport through shadows! _

“Erm. Detective darling,” he winces, hooking one leg of his desk chair with his ankle and pulling it next to Chloe’s so he can sit pressed against her. “You’re crushing the edge of your desk.”

“Uggh!” she grits through clenched teeth, leaving finger indents in the top and side of the vinyl covered MDF as she pulls her hand back. “I swear to your dad, this fucking super strength is so fucking pointlessly _annoying!” _

“You know what. I should go get coffee,” he babbles, deciding it’s wise to effect a retreat until she’s calmed down. “lots of coffee. And lemon bars! It’ll be much easier to find Daniel and calm him down if we have coffee and lemon bars. I’ll be right back!”

With that, he quickly flees.

He quite likes being alive after all.

* * *

His coffee plans meet a yard stick of their own. 

Daniel is huddled on the floor with his head on his knees down the side of the Corvette.

* * *

“Please don’t hurt me,” Daniel sobs as Lucifer awkwardly crouches in front of him. “I’m sorry!”

“Yes well, I’m sure you are. But is the crying really necessary? Honestly, I don’t know what to do with you right now, but I’m sure it will all be easier with less tears.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Daniel chants again, beginning to rock back and forth slightly.

“Yes, you said that all ready,” Lucifer sighs. “Would patting your head help? There there, it will all be better soon?”

“Please don’t drag me to hell,” the distressed detective pleads, still not raising his head from his knees. “I’ll be good, I’ll do anything you want! Please!”

“Look, I’m afraid I have no control over whether you up or down when you die,” Lucifer tells him practically, trying to pull his phone out of his pocket to text Chloe for backup. “That’s all decided by yourself. Well, Amenadiel will probably force the issue like he did for Charlotte and carry you upwards himself given half a chance, but your best bet is just to cleanse yourself of guilt by accepting your flaws and trying to be a better person. Your final destination is all decided by guilt you see. Unless you’re either a sociopathic maniac or crippled by survivors’ guilt or something. Then Azrael will intercede.”

“Charlotte’s in heaven?” Daniel croaks, seeming to pull himself a little out of his terrified stupor. Thank Dad. 

“I did already tell you this,” Lucifer frowns as he types without looking and mashes his thumb against the screen in the vicinity of the send button. “Amenadiel carried her soul to the gates personally before she even finished bleeding out. She’s fine. Up there existing in boring bliss and gazing down adoringly at us all from on high. Trumpets and heralds and harps all that tripe.”

“She’s really okay?”

“As I have repeatedly told you over the last 6 years, I don’t lie. About anything.”

“Charlotte’s okay,” he shudders with another half-strangled sob. “Amenadiel carried her to heaven. She’s okay, she’s… Ooooh- ooh shit, Amenadiel’s a _fucking angel.” _

“Yes, that is how Charlie was conceived. With fucking.”

Daniel glances up at him with a _really dude? _ expression and then breaks into hysterical giggles.

“Wow, you really are some kind of ghoulish poltergeist,” Lucifer snorts as Daniel laughs himself literally breathless. “You have to be already dead or your whiplash emotions would have killed you by now.”

He pauses.

“Plus you can be kind of mean and snappy,” he adds with a smirk. “Playful one instant and lashing out harshly the next. Occasionally forgetful too. I’m told poltergeists are prone to such mannerisms.”

Dan just laughs even more hysterically.

* * *

Erm?

Really, he should have realised what was going on at this point, but it turns out that third time is _not_ the charm.

* * *

Chloe arrives in a whirlwind of resolve, her _lets get shit done_ cop face out in full force. Between the two of them and their inhuman strength, they manage to bundle an alternatively sobbing and laughing Daniel into the back seats of Chloe’s mustang. By pulling his legs around a bit and tangling his arms up in the belt, he somehow succeeds in buckling the shaking man in securely while Chloe jogs back in and goes to lie to her boss some more.

“Told him Dan must have caught the flu virus from Trixie or I too,” she rolls her eyes when she finally returns and slides into the driver’s seat. “Didn’t question it, just told me to get him home before he infects everyone.”

“Well I still hate lying, but whatever gets the job done I suppose,” Lucifer murmurs as he buckles his own seatbelt up.

* * *

“So.” Daniel tries to start, pale and shaking on the penthouse’s Italian leather couch. “So.”

“Yes Daniel, God is real,” Amenadiel repeats gently, Charlie giggling happily behind him as he toddles back and forth, intent on bringing his “Uncle Luci” all of the red wooden blocks to hold. Lucifer sighs put-upon and takes his nephews latest offering, placing it by his feet with the others.

“And-”

“And I’m an archangel and my brother is _the_ Lucifer.”

“But-”

“But the Bible is wrong and he’s not evil, no. Just… misunderstood. And rebellious. And occasionally an asshole.”

“Well there’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one,” Lucifer snorts, now handing Charlie back the large cubes so he can take to his mother. 

“Daniel, I know this is a lot to take in,” Linda adds kindly, “but nothing about the world has really changed, only your view of it. You were already a believer anyway, now you just have proof to back up your faith.”

“But he’s the _devil!” _ he mumbles tremulously with a fearful glance his way. “Satan! El Diablo! The prince of lies and darkness and sin!”

“See, sin doesn’t really work the way most religions teach it,” Amenadiel cuts in, before Lucifer can moan about being called a liar again. “Sure, something things are and will always be bad. Murder, theft, assault, rape and so on. But the so called seven deadly sins are not actually that deadly. Pride, sloth, gluttony… they’re just part of being human. Sure, they act as gateways to _actual_ sin which is why the bible speaks of them with caution. But experiencing them is _human._ What matters is _how_ you indulge those desires. For instance, take lust. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to anyone, no matter who they are or what gender they identify with. And there’s nothing with taking that lust and acting on it. What _does_ matter Dan, is that you don’t hurt anybody by doing so. What _matters, _ is consent.”

“What he’s saying is you should shag the brains out of anyone who takes your fancy so long as they say yes and they’re old enough to say it and _mean it,” _ Lucifer snorts. “Seriously, dad doesn’t care.”

“Rather on the nose, but he is correct,” Amenadiel huffs, grinning at his son as it apparently becomes his turn to receive wooden bricks.

“This is too much,” Daniel groans breathlessly. “This is insane. This is… Insane!”

“Welcome to the Celestial insider’s club Dan,” Chloe smiles lopsidedly, speaking up for the first time since they arrived. “It’s a shitty wild rollercoaster to be on, but it’s better to know about it than not.”

“I need a fucking drink,” Daniel grimaces. “I need a lot of fucking drinks.”

“Finally! A sensible suggestion!” Lucifer cheers loudly as he gets up and heads to the bar.

* * *

They leave Daniel passed out in drunken stupor on the couch once everyone else has left.

Flopping onto the huge bed backwards with an exhausted moan, Chloe calls her wings forth as she falls, spreading them out so that the tips flop off and drape to the floor on either side. Lucifer stands back and admires her with a sinfully smirk for a few seconds, before tossing his robe behind him and crawling up beside her.

“I’m so glad Ella came and picked Trixie up before Dan snapped out of the shock phase,” she mumbles tiredly. “I’m pleased that she’s becoming so capable and independent and resourceful, but she’s just at that age where she doesn’t see the point in using tact.”

“Yes, I can quite imagine her telling her father to suck it up and get over it already,” Lucifer chuckles as he full body stretches, settling again on his side with an arm thrown over his love’s middle. “While it would have been hilarious, I think it would have been counterproductive.”

Chloe hums in agreement, her hand covering his on her waist. 

“How quiet can you be?” she suddenly asks, apropos of nothing. 

“Quiet?” he questions.

“Well, Dan is right there and you still hate doors…” she whispers suggestively, tilting her head to nibble delicately under his ear. 

“Oh, well, I _do_ like a challenge,” he smirks back as his hands begin to wander.

* * *

Normally, Chloe is the first one awake and out of bed, conditioned to early rising by years as a single mother with a full-time job. In contrast, Lucifer has always luxuriated in lie ins, prone to indulging his slothful desires, and until recently, accustomed to staying up until dawn either partying or _playing_ with his guests.

(In hell, only fools sleep for more than five-minute snatches at a time. Lucifer is no fool)

But this morning, Lucifer startles awake when the sun has only just begun to trail its fingers across the city.

He immediately feels uneasy and restless, as if he had an unsettling dream but can’t remember its content. Like he witnessed something dire only to have the memory wiped away completely.

Slowly so as not to disturb his Detective, he slides out the warm clasp of arms and silken sheets and pads into the ensuite on silent feet. He flicks the extractor fan off with the mains switch above the door before tugging the light switch down, ensuring that it’s faint whir and rattling will not disturb the peace behind him.

Five minutes later he creeps out again, clad in clean boxers and an unbuttoned dress shirt.

Daniel is still passed out on the couch, snoring lightly under the cashmere blanket Chloe had draped over him last night. 

Shaking his head but still not dislodging the prickling unease settled in his head, he grabs a bottle of orange and champagne from one of the bar’s wine cooler cabinets and a fresh packet of cigarettes, and then silently slips out onto the balcony.

* * *

Warmth pools on his mostly bare skin and his hair ruffles in the pleasantly stuffy breeze flowing across the city spread before him, but he still feels unbalanced as he lights his third cig of the hour. 

He’d left the sliding balcony door slightly open when he stepped out, still uncomfortable with sealed entrances even after all these eons, so he can hear Chloe’s faint, even breathes as she sleeps on. Separate the sound of her quiet shuffling from Dan’s more jerky-

He can’t hear Daniel’s breathing.

He can’t _hear_ Daniel’s-

“Fuck,” he curses as the smouldering tip of his cigarette falls onto his fingers and stings hotly.

He rushes inside in a hurry.

* * *

“Daniel. Daniel, wake up!”

He shakes the man’s body roughly, two fingers pressing into his neck hoping to find the pulse he also can’t hear.

“Lucifer!” Chloe gasps as she rolls out of bed, woken by his panicked commotion.

“He’s not breathing,” he tells her, forcing himself into calmness. He can deal with this. Partiers at LUX go too far all the time. He knows how to deal with this. He makes sure all his staff know how to deal with this. He _has_ dealt with this before.

And he can still sense Daniel’s soul in his body, so all is not lost yet.

He flips Daniel onto his back and tips his head back, one hand rising to pinch his nose closed. With a determined grimace, he barks out a quick _call an ambulance_ to Chloe to shake her from her horrified stupor, and then takes a deep breath.

His mouth has only just sealed properly over Daniel’s when the smaller man jerks awake and falls _through_ the base of couch onto the floor. 

Lucifer still can’t hear his heartbeat or breathing.


	5. It's all in your head? It's in everyone else's too...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Linda teaches Lucifer to think before he has thoughts.  
Well, she tries to anyway.

4) Linda. 

“I said change me back!” 

“It wasn’t me!” Lucifer yells back. “I swear to you, it must be my Dad meddling again!”

“Fix this, or so help me Lucifer, I will shoot you,” Daniel shouts, tears in his eyes.

“Dan, calm down,” Chloe tries, one hand on each of his upper arms. “I know it’s scary, but it’s not actually the weirdest thing to happen this week. We can cope with this too.”

“You’re damn right I’m scared Clo! God is real, you’re sleeping with the devil, angels exist, and now I’m a freaking ghost!”

“You’re solid most of the time,” she tries to placate. “Look, I’m touching you right now, and you haven’t fallen through any more furniture.”

“That is so not the point,” Daniel cries, slumping in defeat. “I can’t handle this Clo, it’s too much at once.”

“Could we feather him Lucifer?” Chloe asks as she rubs her hands up and down and lets Daniel drop his forehead onto his shoulder. 

“Worth a try I suppose,” he shrugs, faking a calmness he does not at all feel. “Shall I whip mine out or do you want to do the honours?”

Chloe shoots a surreptitious glance at Daniel, who’s head is still bowed over her shoulder. 

“You should do it,” she says slowly and carefully. “We don’t know if, um… mine might not work, or have some strange side effects.”

“Feathers?” Daniel cracks, moving to stand more upright despite the tremors still wracking his frame. “Do I even want to know?”

“Angel feathers have divine healing properties,” Lucifer smiles wryly and without humour, repeating the words he told Chloe only three days ago. He can’t believe so much has happened in such a short period time. By his stars, it’s only just been a week and a half since he left Hell again!

“But. But why would you have feathers? Why would Chloe have…?”

Daniel trails off with yet another distraught look, gaze flickering between Lucifer and his ex. Chloe gently lets her hands resume their rubbing up and down his shoulders, a move which Lucifer has seen her use on the urchin when she too has been upset. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” he sighs as Daniel’s expression starts to become more frantic as more dots connect in his mind.

Only he barely manages to roll his shoulders and shrug his additional limbs into existence before Daniel chokes out a traumatised _oh my god-!_

And promptly faints.

* * *

Add in that the feather does absolutely sodding nothing and, well.

Lucifer really has not the best start to the day.

* * *

“But how does that make you _feel_ Lucifer?”

“I don’t bloody know Doctor!” he near yells. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me that!?”

“I’m here to help you understand those feelings and help you channel them healthily, but I cannot tell you what those feelings _are,” _ Linda corrects in that infuriatingly calm manner she always has. 

“Fed up! Really bloody fed up is what I am!” he spits. “I thought we’d finally solved it, finally discovered that we actually _are_ the masters of our own fates. But now Dad is going and sticking his nose in _again! _ Why can’t he ever just leave me alone!?”

“So you’re angry and irritated, and feeling manipulated,” Linda nods with that damnable knowing look. “But are you _sure_ it’s your… father that’s causing these things to happen to your friends?”

“How can it not be!?” Lucifer sighs exasperatedly, tugging anxiously on his shirt cuffs and throwing his weight backwards until he’s slouched on his therapists couch sloppily. “He’s the only person in the universe capable of making changes this radical. _I _certainly can’t effect someone’s genetic makeup, and certainly none of my siblings or Hell’s denizens can either.”

“I am only saying this to make you think critically about your tendency to arrive at conclusions before all the evidence is in Lucifer,” Linda continues with obvious hesitance. “But every time you’ve blamed your father for the things happening around you in the past, you’ve been _certain_ that he was solely responsible only to later be proven wrong every time.”

“That’s not true!” Lucifer protests with a pout. “Chloe _is_ a miracle, it _is_ my Dad’s fault that my wings came back, Amenadiel _is_ overbearing and over controlling because Dad made him that way…”

“I’m going to repeat back your own explanations to me,” Linda smiles with fond exasperation. “One. The only thing Chloe’s… miracle status effects is her immunity to your aura of desire. She still has complete free will. Two, your father is only responsible for your wings returning in that he made you capable of self-actualising. You brought them back yourself, he just made it so you’re capable of doing so. Three. You have sibling bias and Amenadiel has actually grown and changed almost as much as you in the last five years.”

_“Sibling_ bias!?” Lucifer objects. “What kind of hocus pocus human emotional nonsense is that!?”

“It means your views of each other have been coloured by a mixture of normal childhood rivalry and a lifetime of knowing each other. It’s perfectly normal, if somewhat amplified by eons of time in your case.”

Lucifer scoffs.

“I hardly think my childhood could be considered normal Doctor,” he refutes. “Especially given I didn’t have one, what with springing into being fully formed at the dawn of time, destined to be nothing more than Daddy’s loyal little automaton.”

“Yes, you were never physically a child,” Linda concedes with a strange look (the one that he’s learnt means his not being human just caught her off guard again). “But you _are_ still gaining emotional maturity Lucifer. And that is not your fault,” she adds in a rush before he can complain that he _is_ an adult thank you very much. “You’ve only just recently gained the means and opportunity to experience what nearly all teenagers and young adults have access to from birth.”

He huffs loudly again, and flips his legs up onto the couch, propping his head up on the arm and crossing his arms across his chest. His knees hang over the other arm and leave his feet dangling, but he decides that Linda has already seen him at rock bottom, so she can survive a little lack of decorum and poise.

“This is not solving the problem of my- _our_ friends all being celestially altered!”

“No, but that’s not why we’re here Lucifer,” she reminds him calmly. “We’re here for _you_ and what _you’re_ experiencing.”

“What I’m experiencing is my friends being celestially altered,” he retorts snidely. 

“And we’re back to the original question. How does that make _you feel about your yourself?” _ Linda pushes, dropping her notebook on the coffee table and leaning forward. 

He swallows hard and tries to stop his thoughts from spiralling.

The silence stretches as his breathing harshens.

“Come on Lucifer, I’m right here. I will always listen and take everything you say seriously,” Linda soothes. “How does this make you feel about yourself?”

“Why am I never good enough to keep them safe!?” he blurts as his eyes begin to sting hotly.

* * *

His sessions with Linda never used to last more than 30 minutes at maximum, and more often than not he’d get an idea into his head, and thinking that he now understood how to handle any given problem, he’d leave after maybe only ten or fifteen minutes or so.

Recent experiences have taught him it always works out better for him if he sticks around to hear _everything_ Linda has to say, to make sure she agrees that he’s reached the right conclusion in the safety of her office before he goes tearing off and inevitable painfully crashes headfirst into the correct one in the outside world.

Usually now, he stays for the full hour he’s scheduled in for twice or three times a week, if not longer. 

This does not mean he’s happy about it. Really, he’d rather not come at all. But pretending everything is fine when it’s just _not_ usually ends up with him considerably worse off than if he just admits he needs the help and goes in the first place.

So, he goes. 

He goes and he _tries. _

As the minute hand on the analogue wall clock ticks back up to point at twelve for the second time since he arrived, he finally drags himself off Linda’s couch and scrubs a hand backwards through his mussed and agitated hair. He feels wrung out, drained. Used up and put away wet (and not in the fun way). 

Exhausted. 

“You did so well today,” Linda is praising him softly, pride gleaming obviously from her eyes. “I’m really glad you’re putting in so much effort when you’re here. You’re doing so well!”

“It’s not even been two weeks since Gabriel tossed me back out of hell,” he rasps, self-deprecatingly. “I thought I was going to be stuck down there again forever. And now… It’s just… I’m not sure _well_ is the correct term Doctor.”

“We’ll put a pin in that topic,” she tells him kindly. “I think you’ve dealt with and processed more than enough for one day. Would you let me ring Chloe to come collect you? I pushed you quite hard today and it’s probably best you wait a while before driving.”

“It’s fine, I can fly back,” he grunts. “Seeing as I’m stuck with the feathered blighters, I might as well take advantage of them.”

“Not sure that’s a great idea either,” she huffs in amusement. “Wouldn’t do for you to go falling out of the sky or crashing into some power lines would it?”

“I’m not a bloody pigeon, I wouldn’t-!”

“I’m teasing you,” she laughs over him kindly. “Here, take some gummy bears and sit tight while I go make the call.”

“If you insist Doctor,” he huffs with an obviously faked pout.

* * *

Daniel is pacing around the penthouse with an alarmingly vacant look when he and Chloe arrive back in the mid-afternoon. He had tried to convince his Detective to go back to the precinct and that he’d be fine on his own, but she and Linda had exchanged a look after she’d knocked and entered his therapist’s office, and she’d resolutely declared she was taking the rest of the day off despite his arguments.

“Hey Dan, how are you feeling?” Chloe greets the other man with a concerned frown even as she bundles Lucifer himself into the corner of the couch and eases his jacket off his shoulders for him and then pulls his leather boots off too. 

“Trixie- she-” Daniel stutters, seeming to snap back into himself upon hearing the words spoken to him. “Ella brought her back here after school and- _Chloe_ her eyes were black!”

Chloe’s face quickly moulds into the blankness that Lucifer associates with hidden panic as she listens to the other Detective, but the look just as quickly smooths into neutrality. He tries to stand back up, sure that the current mess has to be his fault somehow, and therefore something he should help fix, but Chloe gently pushes him back into the leather and drops a light kiss on his brow.

“Stay here,” she smiles at him as she pulls a pale pink blanket out from _somewhere_ and drapes it over him (since when did he even own _that!? _ Or- oh wait, Chloe must have bought it in the last two years while he was away. It might even be Beatrice’s…). “I know that look babe. Stop thinking you’re somehow to blame for this. You’re not so please, just sit here and let _me_ handle it okay?”

“Detective I-”

“Please?” she smiles at him again. 

This time all he can do is nod mutely and draw the soft woolly material tighter around him as her lips this time find the patch of skin just behind and under his left ear.

“Come on Dan,” he hears her say as she caresses a hand down his face one last time and then walks past him towards the other detective. “Is Trixie still here? We should talk about this together.”

* * *

Lucifer does not like doors.

There weren’t very many of them in the Silver City. One on his Dad’s building/palace/ego-monument, one that lead into the Garden of Eden and into the rest of Earth beyond it, one that Lucifer had never seen for himself but apparently Eve had found and used to return to Earth… and one on the room his father had specifically created to keep him in just before he’d had Michael toss him into the abyss.

Maybe there are more now, but he’ll never know.

There are many in Hell though. They stretch as far as even a celestial eye can see, horizon to horizon and beyond. Endless winding corridors hewed into the unearthly hard bedrock lined with them. Most of them unlocked but a barrier to freedom for the souls behind them none the less.

Some chained or barred.

Three welded shut permanently.

All of them awful.

One of the first things Lucifer taught himself to do when he came into existence was to bend locks of any type to his will. If he had to tolerate the existence of doors, at least none of them would ever be beyond his means to open. Regardless of mechanism, he could flick them undone with but a single thought. A skill he was very glad to have once he’d dragged himself from the depths of the crater his arrival in Hell had created. 

But while he can mentally open any lock whether mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, and while he understands their purpose and at times, their necessity, he’d still rather the door just not be there in the first place. 

So there are no doors in the penthouse besides the one leading into the elevator, the ones in and into the various bathrooms, and the one that leads out onto the balcony that’s rarely shut except during the occasional thunderstorm. 

To his surprise, Chloe has almost not altered this set up at all in the nearly two years since she’d claimed his penthouse and made her own. Aside from hanging a curtain over the open doorway into the spawn’s room for her privacy, every room remains open access. Even the master bedroom is still as open to the main room as ever.

Unfortunately, this means he can hear almost everything that the spawn and the Detective are telling Daniel down the hallway in the urchin’s room. Both Chloe and Beatrice are defending him ardently, but…

_You are not responsible for the emotions and reactions that people have to things beyond your control_ he hears Linda’s voice remind him in his head as Daniel’s yelling increases in volume. Again. 

Damn, but sometimes he swears that the good doctor can hear his thoughts, even when she’s _not_ there in person.

* * *

Another ten minutes pass and the shouting continues. 

Lucifer begins to contemplate padding downstairs into his club barefoot with his blanket just to escape the noise.

* * *

(He can’t help but compare the argument raging in the spawn’s room to those he overheard between his mother and father in the days before he finally stood up and said _enough. _ Before his father turned on him with furious disappointed eyes and-)

“He’s the _devil!” _ he hears Daniel near roar. “And he’s turned my daughter into a _demon!” _

A patch of red, burnt and charred skin begins to appear on the inside of his wrist. He gulps, grabs his phone off the table and scrambles into the elevator.

* * *

“Hey Satan. I left mom and dad to it; only so much I can take when dad’s being an unmitigated asshole.”

Lucifer manfully does not jump out of his skin when Beatrice smoothly materialises next to him, forming out of the shadow created by the bar and spirit cabinet lights to his left. 

He hastily swigs from his crystal tumbler to cover the flinch he _does_ fail to clamp down on.

“Yes, they’re being rather loud aren’t they,” he mumbles, wishing the words had come out louder and stronger; as it is, he has to restrain another wince over how pathetic he sounds.

“Never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad they separated and divorced now,” the young teenager sighs melodramatically, wiping ineffectually at the tears still falling from her eyes. “I could _not_ live with them going at each other like that every day.”

“I’m still not entirely sure what your mother saw in the douche in the first place,” Lucifer snorts before he can think better of it. Thankfully, Beatrice seems as unaffected by his lack of tact as ever, and merely giggles.

“He’s not _all_ bad,” the little demonling grins through her damp chuckles. 

“Just most of the time then,” he deadpans back with a smirk, feeling the shaking of hands finally starting to subside and the red scaly flesh finally halting its crawl up towards his neck.

“Normally I’d object,” Beatrice shrugs wryly, “But right now he’s being a dick so I’m not feeling that magnam- magmamimous- fuck, how do you say that?”

“Magnanimous,” he offers as he tips back the last of the deep gold liquor he’d chosen at random. 

“Hmmm, that. Hey, can I try a sip?” she asks as he tops his glass back up to just under the brim.

“Nope,” he pops. “This is a licenced bar and nightclub. No underage drinking will be taking place in here thank you very much. I’d quite like to not get shut down for serving minors.”

“Awww really? But drugs and _hookers_ are illegal too and you let plenty of them in.”

(The emphasis on hookers does not escape his notice, their private joke over her name still going strong even after all these years)

“Beatrice darling, I thought I taught you better than that! I said no underage drinking _in here. _ Read between the lines and ask me again once we go back upstairs and out of the licensed area.”

* * *

The spawn shadow crawls upstairs twice to check on the state of her parents before Lucifer huffs in resignation and calls Linda and asks her to come mediate.

There’s no way he’s going to attempt it himself.

* * *

“Oh Lucifer,” the Doctor sighs in empathy when she carefully treads down the stairs into the bar twenty minutes later, seemingly reading his every thought straight off his face. 

“I’m fine,” he grumbles, still huddling under his fleecy blanket, hiding the scorched skin still covering his arms and chest from her sight. 

“No you’re not, but that’s okay,” she tells him, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“Dad’s being a prick and now mom is so mad at him she’s lost control of herself too,” Beatrice grumbles herself, sipping at the glass of orange juice Lucifer had fetched for her. 

“Right,” Linda blinks, shooting the child a concerned look, undoubtedly for her language. “Okay. At least this is a human argument, right?”

“If you ignore the part where Daniel is now a part-time ghost and Chloe an angel, yes.” Lucifer tells her in a deliberately blasé manner. “And possibly also the fact that they’re arguing over celestial and infernal matters.”

“Sure,” Linda draws out in that way of hers. “I can totally handle that?”

“Well it’s you or Ella,” the spawn snorts just as the first of Lux’s staff strolls in from the back stockroom to prepare for the evening shift. To poor Patrick’s credit, he only pauses and blinks for a split second at the sight of his boss huddled under a baby pink blanket with a teenager leaning on him before shrugging and carrying on with his duties.

“Actually that’s an idea,” Linda suddenly muses. “Why don’t the two of you go to Ella’s for the evening? I’m sure she would love to see you both, and she must be just about finished with work for the day? I’ll tell Chloe to call you once things have settled down here.”

“Sure,” Lucifer sighs, glancing down at his bare feet. “Why not?”

“It will fine Lucifer,” his therapist tells him with a hint of sternness. “These things always sort themselves out eventually, and Dan _will_ have to learn to accept his new reality. I am not sharing any details with you, no matter how much you ask, but he _has_ been seeing me himself for a couple of years now. I can handle his outbursts.”

“Okay, but-” he tries to contradict.

“No, no buts.” She cuts over him. “And stop blaming yourself. Remember, _not everything is your fault.” _

He nods silently again, wondering how the hell she really does always seem to know _exactly_ what he’s thinking.

* * *

Ella is waiting for them in the parking garage under her tenement building as they pull up into an empty guest space. Beatrice applies the handbrake and turns the ignition off with practiced ease, handing him back the keys just as the forensic scientist sighs in a dramatic fashion and crosses her arms across her chest pointedly.

“You have got to stop letting her drive, mi diablo!” she yells at him, punching his shoulder ineffectually as he opens the passenger door and climbs out gracefully. “One day Chloe is gonna find out and bust yo ass! Then I’ll lose my favourite brother!”

“Miss Lopez, I assure you that she will not discover the arrangement the urchin and I have any time soon,” he grins back at her, feeling better already.

“See, I know you believe that because otherwise you wouldn’t have said it, but bro, you are hardcore lying to yourself,” she snorts, throwing her arms around him and pulling him into a hug. “Come on little Decker, get your ass over here, group hug!”

“Really, must we?” Lucifer sighs put-upon as he weathers the physical assault of his person. 

“Always and forever my guy,” Ella grins as Beatrice chuckles and joins in. “Now come on, let’s get upstairs. Maze brought Charlie round and I _swear, _ he’s the absolute cutest!”

“Maze is here!?” the demonling gasps happily, immediately abandoning him in favour of running over to the building’s central lift. “I thought she was still in New York with Eve and Michael!”

“Just got back this afternoon,” Ella tells her cheerfully as she grabs his hand despite the burns and claws and tugs him after the urchin. 

“She went with _Michael!?” _ Lucifer demands to know, letting his horror be audible in his tone. The doors of the elevator slide shut behind them, and Ella squeezes his hand tighter for a long second as it lurches into motion.

“Not exactly,” she shrugs with a grimace. “He showed up here with Raguel in tow wanting to swap shifts, but Raguel seriously looked like he’d been bullied into it and wasn’t actually happy to swap. So I told them no and Michael got mad. Then I threatened to set Chloe on him and he went meek as a lamb again. Raguel took the opportunity to flap off back to heaven while he was distracted, and suddenly I’m left with a sulking archangel on my couch that’s refusing to go back to the Silver City for whatever reason. So I called Eve and asked if her spare room was still empty. Got her to talk to Michael, and suddenly he vanishes in a puff of displaced air. Next thing I know, Maze is calling me to yell about having her, ahem, _personal_ time with Eve interrupted by, and I quote, “Lucifer’s dickish dickless clone”.”

Lucifer can’t help it, he bursts out laughing.

“Now that’s more like it brother!” Ella grins as they troop along the corridor to her apartment door. “No doom and gloom in the Lopez den of geek! Also I’m really sorry, but I’m dying to know. Tried to ignore it but I just can’t. Dude. _Where are your shoes!?” _

* * *

Settled in the middle of Ella’s oversized and overly plush couch with Ella on one side, Beatrice on the other, Charlie in his lap, and Maze stretched out on the rug by their feet, Lucifer notices his skin has mostly faded back into its more angelic appearance. 

Maze cackles evilly and waves her controller around victoriously while the rest of them groan and Charlie giggles at them all, and he although he’s still seriously worrying about how Chloe and Linda are faring, he feels content for the first time that day.

* * *

Of course, his phone chooses that moment to begin ringing obnoxiously with the ring tone he’d set specifically for his Detective.

Eternal flame is silenced as he slides the green button across the touch screen, and he brings the device to his ear hastily as the game is paused by Ella before the next round can begin.

_ “Hey babe, I don’t want to alarm you, and you absolutely shouldn’t rush back. But Linda’s gone a bit catatonic and keeps mumbling about being able to hear my thoughts? I think she can hear Daniel’s some of the time too. She’s not explaining it very well and I don’t really know what to do. I know you need some time regroup yourself but neither Amenadiel or Gabriel are picking up and I don’t have any of your other sibling’s numbers.” _

“Gabriel has a phone?” he exclaims in lieu of anything more meaningful when the silence stretches on for too long.


	6. "I gave it away"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella protec  
Ella Attac  
But most importantly  
Ella is a beautiful goddamn snacc

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I can't count and there's actually 7 chapters not 6.  
I forgot that I split in the intro off... oops.
> 
> Also this is full of Spanish, a language which I don't speak. But Ella didn't care and spoke it a lot anyway. Please feel free to correct it if I have mangled it.

5) Ella.

“Hey, hermano!” Ella says into his neck, having tackled him into a hug once again as soon as he’d hung up the phone -despite Charlie and his stickiness still being ensconced in his lap. “I know Chloe told me all this crazy shit has been happening recently, but it’s okay! You’re _the_ Lucifer man! Archangel of badassness and sticking up for what’s right! You got this!”

“I think the only thing I’ve got Miss Lopez, is an abundance of Hell tainted bad luck,” he sighs back. 

“Pessimist much,” Mazikeen grunts from the floor.

“It’s hardly pessimism if bad things actually keep happening Maze!”

“Well if you keep expecting it, then of course it’s gonna happen,” Maze drawls with a knowing look. “You make what you will!”

Lucifer glowers at her, unimpressed.

“Unckwel Yuci!” Charlie then giggles, uncaring of the tension around him. “Want more juice!”

“I want does not get, fledgling,” Lucifer tells him with a no-nonsense look, glad for the provided distraction. “Manners are important and will take you far in life, so start practicing them now. Of course not everyone _deserves_ your use of good manners, but you should never stoop to the level of an uncouth ruffian yourself.”

“Errrrr,” Charlie replies with wide eyes. “No get you?”

“Here, we’ll practice,” Lucifer nods at the small being as Beatrice tries and fails to not start giggling next to him. “Repeat after me. Lucifer, please may I have some more juice?”

“Yuci pwese more juice?” Charlie tries with a toothsome smile.

“Close enough I suppose,” Lucifer sighs, scooping the tiny urchin up and heading towards Ella’s kitchen. 

“They’re both so adorable!” he hears Ella squeal as he sets the small boy on his wobbly feet on the cool linoleum. 

“I heard that!” he calls back in protest. “No I am not!”

Only Chloe is allowed to call him adorable.

* * *

He leaves Beatrice at Ella’s under Maze’s watchful eye. Given that it was Maze who was supposed to be babysitting Charlie in the first place, the tiny spawn also stays, content to stomp around babbling near-nonsense and tossing blocks and toy cars around.

Ella wheedles at him until he gives in and allows her to drive his Corvette (Chloe’s actually; technically she’s the named owner these days. He’d left her _everything_ when he’d realised he had to go back _there), _ and so he once again settles into the passenger seat with the pink blanket folded in his lap, still barefoot. 

“I notice you’re not wearing your cross necklace again these days?” he tries when he feels awkward as their previous conversation about Chloe and Dan comes to a stilted halt. 

“Yeah,” Ella grumbles back with a quick glare skyward. “I knew something was going on with you, something more than I was admitting to myself. I was still trying to convince myself that you were just a really committed method actor but… well then you left, and Chloe was a mess, and Trixie went crazy with the teenage rebellion, and no one could explain to me how a theatre room got filled up with an entire catholic community of corpses and what that had to do with Charlie…”

“So you put two and two together?” he tries to prompt when she trails off. He knew that Ella _knew_ knew now – Chloe had told him so pretty quickly after his ash and soot covered arrival two weeks ago, but he hadn’t heard the full story, or any of the particulars about _how_ she came to know.

And he was curious so.

“I still had a couple of bloody feathers from the loft after Marcus… Cain. Man, I still can’t believe Marcus was Cain. That _maldito_ asshole.”

“A feather?” he blinks in alarm. He never did find out what happened to that crime scene once internal affairs sealed it off; he’d been too busy alternatively moping and panicking about Chloe running from him in fear to bother to find out either.

“Yeah. You kind of vanished and Amenadiel said you were injured but would be fine. Chloe was properly out of it. Which who can blame her ya know? She almost married the Sinnerman who was also _Cain, _ and then he almost _killed_ the two of you. But I saw most of the feathers before Amenadiel just flashed this weird government badge and shoed us all out. When we came back, all the bullet holes and casings were still there, as well as the bodies, but the feathers were gone. All except a couple which were underneath where Marcus had collapsed.”

“You kept them?” he asks as Ella deftly darts into the inside lane at the next intersection and pulls the hand break up to wait for the lights to change. 

“Well I figured if Amenadiel of all people was so anxious to remove all evidence of them that it wouldn’t be a good idea to let IA get a hold of them. And then like I said, more crazy shit went down with your ex-girlfriend and Charlie. And Trixie was getting in trouble at school most days, telling everyone she’s a Satanist and was gonna kick their asses for calling you evil… So I pulled them out of storage where I hid them and tested them. Man, no way are they earthly. Their cellular structure is insane. And the blood on them… jeesh man, I’m pretty sure you could sell it to junkies so they could get high off you.”

“Really?” he perks up in sudden interest.

“No!” Ella barks at him as she accelerates hard away from the junction. “Do _not_ do that! That is a terrible idea and I should _not_ have said anything!”

“But think of the-!”

“Devil-Angel or not dude, I will kick your ass so hard your nuts will pop out of your throat if you even _think_ about it,” she tells him sternly. “And I’ve seen my abuela use that move, so I know _exactly_ how to do it. I will also wait until Chloe is stood right next to you, so you will feel every _inch_ of steel toe cap driving upwards into you.”

“Threats noted and taken seriously,” he winces, scooting slightly away from her and shielding his groin with one hand.

* * *

Chloe is sat on the top step of the stairs leading up to the elevator with her head in her hands, Mary (one of LUX’s longest severing employees and more than overdue another promotion he thinks absently) sat next to her with one arm around her, talking softly into her ear. 

LUX is almost ready to be opened as he and Ella bounce down onto the main club floor and then hastily cross over to the seated pair. It’s a weekday night and only an hour or so past most office closing times, but a small queue had already begun to form outside when they’d pulled up and tossed the car keys to the valet. 

Lucifer needs to bundle his Detective up and get her back upstairs before Patrick signals tonight’s bouncers to start letting people in. She won’t be happy if the general public, or dad forbid, any lurking paparazzi see her in her current tear stained state.

“Hey Boss,” Mary greets softly in her Portuguese accent as he hops up to the pair two steps at a time. 

“Miss Gomez,” he nods back, kneeling awkwardly on front of them and hesitating only a moment before tugging Chloe to rest her head on his chest. A fresh wave of tears bursts from her, and he experiences a moment of panic before remembering that all he has to do is hold her close and stroke her hair like she does with the spawn. “You have my sincerest thanks for holding the fort in my absence Mary.”

“I’ll gladly help every time if it’s one of my favourite people needing the support,” she replies with a smile as she stands. Squeezing Chloe’s shoulder in support one last time, she then swiftly sashays past Ella in the direction of the staff back rooms. 

“Come on love,” Lucifer says quietly, conscious that the final round of pre-opening checks are now happening around them. “We should go into the elevator at least.”

“I’m sorry,” she hiccups into his chest, his now hopelessly rumpled shirt clenched in one fist hard enough that he’s beginning to fear for the seams. “I’m so sorry!”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her weakly, knowing that it’s actually his fault really. If he wasn’t who he was, if wasn’t _the devil, _ Lucifer the fallen angel and King of Hell… well none of this would have happened. 

“I didn’t think-” she sobs through stuttered breaths. “-I didn’t think it would become a- a- full blown argument like that. And now Linda...”

“Mi hermana, está bien. Come on sweetie, let’s go upstairs,” Ella soothes as she comes to his rescue. She hooks her hands under Chloe’s arms carefully, and between the two of them, they manage to guide her shakily to her feet and through the open lift doors behind them. Lucifer has to bear most of her weight, as angels have denser muscle and bone and are therefore heavier than humans, but they manage. 

“I can-” Chloe suddenly snorts to Ella through her tears as they rise upwards through the building, the sound heart breaking despite the obvious humour driving it. “I can understand your Spanish like it’s English now.” She finishes with a scared chuckle. “My- my brain just _knows_ what you’re saying and how to reply.

“hasanana hdha sayakun mufidaan”, Lucifer huffs wryly in modern Arabic, deftly hiding his surprise and alarm; none of his siblings share his gift of universal multilingualism, but apparently Chloe does now. His Dad has some _serious_ explaining to do.

“That is seriously cool,” Ella gasps at them both as the doors slide open to the penthouse. “Can you tutor me? I’ve been trying really hard to learn Mandarin Chinese but it’s not been going so great recently. Got some friends I met online through gaming you see. They’ve always wanted to share their language with me.”

“Um, yeah I guess I could try?” Chloe frowns confused as she staggers towards their bedroom, taking a deep breath and pushing out of his supporting grasp. Lucifer lets her go, silently mouthing thank you to Ella for her continuous over enthusiasm and unfailing ability to distract from thoughts not best dwelled upon.

“I’ll stay with her, you go find Dan and Linda,” the bubbly scientist mummers to him as she strides past to where Chloe has now flopped onto the bed diagonally with her wings splayed in a mass of ruffled feathers beneath her.

* * *

He finds Linda huddled in the corner of the open plan kitchen, her back pressed up against the tall larder unit and her hands in white knuckle fists. 

Dan is sat on a bar stool at the breakfast bar at the opposite end. He looks haggard and his eyes glare daggers at him as he glides into the room with false confidence.

“I’m aware you’re still furious at me Daniel,” he drawls before the other Detective can spit something cutting. “But we have rather more important things to deal with right now than your untimely display of hatred and loathing.”

“Fix this,” Daniel sneers through gritted teeth before thankfully standing and pushing _through_ him. 

Lucifer carefully doesn’t react.

(He was probably trying to barge Lucifer’s shoulder, but he simply fazes through him like he’s not there at all. It sends a shiver down Lucifer’s spine, but he doesn’t say anything, refusing to give Daniel the satisfaction.)

Instead, he turns his attention to Linda.

* * *

“Concentrate on my thoughts only,” he repeats again, trying to pull his angelic presence to the foreground, allowing it to affect his aura in a way he usually supresses out of disgust. “There’s only me and my thoughts. Just me. Concentrate on only me.”

_I am an ocean of calm_ he keeps thinking at himself loudly as he talks. _A pool of serenity, an open stretch of water, a single ripple across an endless pond, a-_

“Lucifer,” Linda gasps tearfully in front of him as her presence crashes into his like a battering ram, her hand also reaching out shakily to touch his cheek. “How can you think so little of yourself when you are so deserving of love?”

The pool shatters like glass and he’s falling through the abyss.

Falling falling _falling_ while Linda wraps her arms around his head and sobs with him.

* * *

When he comes back to himself, he’s wrapped in wings. 

They’re as white and gleaming and immaculate as his own, but softer somehow. Imbued with endless warmth in the same way his shine with immense power. 

“Detective?” he croaks.

“Hey babe, you with me now?”

He nods with a shudder, pressing himself further into her heat and light, desperate to fill the aching hole that’s trying to swallow him from the inside out. 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Chloe breathes into his hair, shushing him gently and stroking the back of his neck with one hand. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

“Linda?” he rumbles in a raspy voice, questioning.

“She’s fine,” she reassures him, titling her head to rest her cheek on his crown. “You gave her a bit of a scare before you shoved her out of your head, but she’s fine. Says it was like a brick wall slamming into her and forcing her back into her own mind, but she’s fine.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he gasps through another full body shudder. 

“You didn’t,” Chloe tries to comfort. “She says it helped actually. You showed her how to shut everyone else’s thoughts out.”

“I’m sorry,” he whines, uncaring that it tears from his throat in a pitch high with horror.

“No, no, no,” Chloe refutes kindly. “You did good babe. The only people who are sorry are us; sorry _for_ you.”

He nods weakly, too tired and drained to argue and sags harder against his love, remembering suddenly that’s she’s capable of bearing his full unearthly weight now.

“Come on, let’s go to the bar. I can’t believe I’m not just condoning this but actively encouraging it, but I think you could do with a stiff drink or twelve.”

“Oh, I’ll be damned again but that sounds divine,” he chokes with a mirthless laugh.

* * *

They sit at the bar in silence, Chloe tucked under his arm and an open bottle of Macallan M sat in front of them. They haven’t bothered with tumblers; he’s swigging directly from the bottle. Dan is hunched on the couch behind them looking contrite and ashamed, with Linda looking pale but alert beside him. 

Ella is crashing about in the kitchen at the other end of the penthouse, the only one making any sound as she occasionally swears in Spanish and bangs pans and pots around. Hear can hear one of the ovens humming, and something simmering on the hob.

“I should go,” Daniel mutters for the seventh time. Linda just as quickly tells him no. 

Again.

It’s well past midnight.

* * *

“Aha!” Ella crows triumphantly, finally strutting back into the main room with a grin. She’s carrying two trays as she walks; one loaded with precariously balanced bowls, the other with various sauce bottles and rattling with cutlery. “Your kitchen might be full of the fanciest shit I’ve ever had to contend with, but this gal has conquered it anyway! Bow to your chef queen mis amigos, for I have cooked up a storm good enough to lift any blackened mood!”

“I’m not hungry,” Dan mutters petulantly.

Linda elbows him in the ribs, clearly annoyed with him even beyond her professional boundaries now. 

“Tough shit nueces,” Ella snarks at him cheerfully. “You’re gonna eat this, and you’re gonna enjoy it. Now sit up and take a bowl.”

Lucifer takes his own portion of _mole poblano_ with a wide grin he only has to half force and then swipes the bowl of nachos towards him with a more genuine smile at Chloe. When he dunks the triangle crisp in first the guac and then his mole, he can’t help but let out a quiet moan of appreciation at the taste.

“Now that is the kind of endorsement I’m looking for,” Ella fist pumps with a laugh, still resolutely ignoring the otherwise dour mood of the group. 

“It’s really good, yeah,” Chloe adds with her own attempt at a smile.

“Excellent in fact,” Lucifer continues smoothly, hating the gloomy atmosphere more with every passing second. “You must instruct me in the recipe as it tastes quite remarkable. Have you used additional guajillo peppers and pumpkin seeds?”

“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Ella winks at him, claiming the plate or tortillas from Daniel and then dropping to sit next to him. 

“I would gladly make a deal for it,” he offers with a smirk, finally starting to slip back into his usual suave persona. “A favoured owed in exchange for a peek at the ingredients list perhaps?”

“Nah, I know what I want already,” Ella smiles evilly as she swipes a jalapeño stack from Linda despite her food-muffled protest.

“Oh? Do tell darling…”

“I want to be second in line to kick your dad’s abusive ass,” she answers with rarely seen seriousness. “I wholeheartedly recognise that Chloe gets first dibs, but that _hijo de puta_ gonna have some words lashed at him by yours truly. And I give zero fucks that he’s god.”

Lucifer chokes on his mouthful of chicken and tabasco.

* * *

“I’m serious bro,” Ella tells him even later as the light pollution shrouded stars twinkle distantly above them. Soon, the sun will rise above the distant horizon and hide them altogether. “I’ll kick his ass for you first chance I get.”

“I thought you and my father were, to use your own word, “tight”?” he sighs as he pulls another drag from his joint, watching the smoke curl away into the night air.

“The big guy and me? Serious falling out recently,” Ella snorts. “I don’t know if you heard, but he was a real ass to his son. Kicked him out for wanting free will, damned him to eternal torment unfairly.”

“I’d heard rumours of that, yes,” Lucifer responds dryly as he offers her his rollie. “Though I believe the truth of the matter was a tad more complicated in reality.”

“The bible and the church totally do give you a bad rap though, even worse than I’d already thought” she shrugs taking it and inhaling deeply. She breathes out again with surprising ease, and Lucifer can’t help but raise an eyebrow as he reclaims the joint. Definitely not her first time getting stoned on weed then. 

“The victor always writes history Miss Lopez,” he shrugs. After the utterly traumatising rollercoaster of emotions he’s already ridden today, he doesn’t really want to dwell on the topic _again, _ but he’ll suffer through it for Ella. 

“It’s okay, I already got the story from Eve,” she shakes her head, guessing the reason for his flat tone. “She’s not as bias as certain other witnesses to that section of history.”

“In my defence, I was as clueless and naïve as Eve at the time,” Lucifer chuckles dryly. “Bloody good shag all considering though. Exceptionally vanilla by today’s standards, even taking into account the poor hacks who can barely manage missionary, but still a bloody good shag.”

“The forbidden fruit was my best friend’s dick,” Ella deadpans to herself as she turns and leans backwards on the balcony railing. Lucifer rotates with her, and inside he can see Linda easing Daniel and Chloe through a rather more civil discussion that the one he’d overheard earlier in the evening. 

“I’d offer you a mouthful,” he grins, hand coming back to his lips for another drag. “But I’m a one woman devil these days.”

“Sinning is winning though,” Ella smirks teasingly. “But nah, you and Chloe are too amazing together for me to even contemplate it. Besides, just the mere suggestion feels like incest now hermano.”

“Ugh, now there’s a line even _I_ won’t cross,” he grimaces. “Sex should be kept everywhere _but_ in the family.”

“I might take a swipe at Gabriel though…” Ella suggests slyly with a knowing sideways glance at him. “He looks pretty cut under all those baggy hoodies he favours…”

“Please don’t ask me about fucking my brother,” he winces playfully.

“I’m glad you assumed I’d be the one doing the fucking,” she laughs, licking her top teeth with raised eyebrows.

“Oh please Miss Lopez. I’ve known that feathery fluffball for almost all eternity and I can _guarantee_ you will be the one doing all the work.”

“I really will though,” she says softly as she nudges him fondly with her shoulder. “I still believe in morality and atonement and all that other stuff, and I still think your dad is all powerful and whatever.”

“Good, because he is,” Lucifer injects with a scowl.

“But you see Lucifer, that just makes what he did _worse. _ He could have done anything. Sat you down and talked it through, listened to your very valid concerns, treated you like the _decent person_ that you are, and according to very reliable sources, always have been. But he didn’t. He ignored you, belittled you, and _forced_ you to take a stand. And then even though _he_ was the one that drove you to that point and gave you no choice, he still blamed it all on you and threw _all_ of the consequences at _your_ feet. Luci, he _threw you into hell_ just because you learned what love is outside of the familial and asked for the chance to experience it.”

“Well Michael did the actual tossing part,” he gruffs self-consciously, putting his back to the balcony door again. 

“Yeah. And Chloe kicked his ass for it. Shame you missed that. It was _awesome.” _

“I’ve no doubt.”

Damn, but he’s not high enough for this conversation.

“So yeah,” Ella continues, hooking her arm through his. “I’ll march up to your dad one day and punch his teeth in. Scream at him a little and let him know exactly why he deserves every hit. I’ll do it, and I’ll make sure everyone knows I’m doing it in your name. Actually, it’s a shame you don’t still have that flaming sword Amenadiel told me about. I know where I’d like to stick the pointy end.”

Lucifer knows she’s joking about that last part, but he’s still perfectly serious when he tells her:

“Oh, I’m absolutely convinced you could summon it with your raw willpower if you tried my dear.”

* * *

Looking back, Lucifer is honestly ashamed that he still hadn’t cottoned onto the pattern by this point.

* * *

“Come to bed babe,” Chloe breathes against his neck. 

There’s no lust there, just worn exhaustion and the desire for them to be side by side as they slumber. He nods, glancing back at the rising sun one last time before letting himself be tugged inside by the hand.

* * *

He whimpers when the bed dips behind him, clutching at Chloe as his breath stutters.

_Something is wrong…_

The air feels stifling around him, simmering and burning hot enough to scald. He breathes it in and chokes.

Somewhere nearby, someone is watching.

A shadow flickering at the edge of his vision. A darkness blending with the endless black surrounding him. 

Malicious. Ill intent pours from it in waves.

It is familiar. _He_ is familiar.

_Ol uran g Samael._

I see you. I see you Samael.

_“arp nalvage lrasd ol!”_ he shouts back, turning turning turning, trying to see the shade amongst the shadows. Trying to see _him._

“Lucifer!”

* * *

He wakes with a jolt, gasping in cool air.

Ella is hovering over him with concern painted across her face, kneeling on the mattress beside him. Slowly, he forces his arms to go slack, release an equally worried looking Chloe from his unintentional death grip. 

“I’m fine!” he forces himself to grin at them both. But the smile feels beyond brittle, and he knows he doesn’t sound the least bit convincing.

“Sure you are dude,” Ella frowns back with obvious sarcasm. “You were whimpering in your sleep.”

He becomes aware of the slick, clammy sweat coating his skin. He never sweats normally, his body too acclimatised to searing heat after eons in Hell. Father be damned, he needs a shower and- and-

Oh _Christ,_ his wings are out. And they’re _leathery and spiked._

He scrambles out of bed before either of the woman can stop him and near slams the en-suite door shut behind him. 

Sliding down it until he sits on the cold tile floor with his back pressed against the wood and his head in his hands, he trembles. Only the low light from the floor level lighting strip under the sink vanity unit holds the room’s darkness at bay, but he can’t bring himself to stand up and pull the chord down to switch the main lights on. 

“Babe, it’s okay, it was just a nightmare,” he hears Chloe say through the door to him after a few seconds.

“What language was that before?” he hears Ella whisper quietly next, clearly having forgotten again (or perhaps never realised in the first place) that his hearing is far superior to any human’s.

There’s a pause, and then Chloe answers just as quietly.

“It- it doesn’t really have a name. Enochian I suppose. Its- it’s the original language. The first to ever exist.”

She pauses again. Takes in a shuddering breathe.

“He was- he was yelling for his Dad to save him or to stop or back away or… I’m not sure. The vocab’s a bit… simplistic? Limited? Meaning comes more from intonation than the words themselves.”

“He was the shadow,” he whispers in answer to her unasked question, knowing that she could hear him now even with the door between them.

“He’s not here Lucifer, it’s okay babe,” Chloe reassures. “Please let me open the door.”

“What’s going on? Is Lucifer alright?”

Oh and great, now Linda has been woken up too. He slams brick walls up around his mind reflexively, flinching as it traps his own thoughts in with him. 

“No, please!” he exclaims as he feels the door handle turn above him. He pushes his weight backwards despite how it pins his featherless wings painfully against his back, blocking the door from swinging inwards. He does _no_t want Ella or Linda to see him like this, with spreading whorls of incinerated flesh strewn across his body and eyes which are no doubt filled with the flame scorched screams of the damned.

“Okay, that’s okay,” Chloe agrees as he hears her let go of the handle and crouch down again. “Would it be alright if only I came in?”

“You can- you can come in me any time darling,” he quips weakly on autopilot.

“Oh you beautiful disaster,” she sighs through a chuckle. “You’re such a lovable dork.”

“Only you?”

“Just me babe.”

He scoots away from the door and rolls into the adjacent corner.

* * *

He sits for quite a while with Chloe perched between his knees, her back against his flaying chest and his face tucked forward into her neck. 

She doesn’t seem to mind the way that patches of his hair ripple in and out of reality, or how the first two fingers on each of his hands keep trying to turn into claws.

* * *

He doesn’t know how long it is before he’s able to finally shrug the hideous bat-like wings away, but he’s numb from the cold of the tiles seeping up into him when he finally does. 

Chloe doesn’t mention that either.

* * *

“It just makes me wonna ya know, go back to my old church and scream at them all for being so blind to reality,” Ella is muttering distastefully to Linda when Chloe eventually convinces him to follow her back out into the warmth of the bedroom and penthouse beyond. “I always said that the devil got a bad rap, but _man_ I did not realise I was understating so hard.”

“I still can’t get over the fact that _the_ literal, _actual_ devil is a big harmless goofball who loves solving LA crimes like a randy Sherlock Holmes,” Linda sniggers back. “Well maybe not entirely harmless. He can sure scare the shit out of anyone who deserves it. Punched a few holes in my walls in his time too. But he’s certainly not violent or evil.”

Chloe steers him to sit on the edge of their bed, the sheets still wrinkled up and tangled as he listens in on the quiet conversation in the other room. He can’t hear if Dan is there too, but then Dan doesn’t have a heart beat or need to breathe any more apparently; there’s not a lot to listen out for. 

“Talking of people who deserve it,” Ella carries on lowly, seemingly not having heard the bathroom door open. “Amenadiel couldn’t give me a quick lift up to heaven could he? I have a boot to swing into an ass.”

“Oh you and me both girl,” Linda scoffs back. “But apparently if you cross any of the celestial plane boundaries as a mortal, you’ll instantly die. He could bring our souls back down again afterwards, but he’d have to stick them in the bodies of people who only died in the last minute or so.”

“I think I’m okay staying in my own flesh prison thanks,” Ella huffs wryly. Lucifer can imagine the exaggerated face of disgust she’s probably pulling as she says the words. “Shame though, because I _really_ want to stab that cabrón in the neck. Like, you have _no idea_ how much Linda. Ughh, it just makes me _so_ mad even thinking about it.”

“Yeah, you’re um. Being quite mentally loud about it Ella. I’m trying to shut you out-”

“But I- I could just march right up to him and-! And _que se maldiga al infierno! _ –Just yeet him off this bastarding immortal coil-! OH HOLY SHIT!”

Lucifer and Chloe both throw themselves to their feet and scramble to the bedroom doorway.

Stood with one arm outstretch and a look of pure shock on her face in front of the TV, is Ella.

With a very familiar looking flaming sword in her hand.


	7. Oh. My. GAWD!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knock knock  
Who's there?  
God  
God who?  
God your nose.

+1) God

When the initial shock has worn off a tad, it’s easy to see that the flaming sword is not the same as the original one that he’d tossed through a void in space and time after his mother on an LA beach more than four years ago. 

The grip is bigger, the pommel rounder, and it doesn’t look like it will slide into pieces. There’s a handful of Nordic runes (Nordic? why the hell are they _Nordic?)_ etched into the centre of the blade’s fuller, and the cross guard is less ornamental. 

Also the flames are quite happily licking up Ella’s entire arm without burning her.

So there’s that. 

“How do I put it out!?” Ella screeches, standing rigidly still but looking like she wants nothing more than to run in terror.

“Emotions!” Linda yells in panic when no one else speaks up. “Um, Lucifer said before- Years ago! That the activation was tied to his emotions!”

“Well I’m really fucking emotional!” Ella yells back with wide eyes.

“Well stop doing that then!” Lucifer yells himself. 

“I’m holding a _freaking flaming sword and I’m on fire!_ I. Am. _Trying to!” _

“Water! Drop it in water!” Chloe suggests frantically. 

“The balcony hot tub!” Lucifer exclaims gleefully, thrilled to have contributed positively.

Ella glances between the blade in her hand and the open balcony doorway.

And then sets off at a run chanting _fuck fuck fuck! _ as she goes.

* * *

They stare at the extinguished blade at the bottom of the shallow pool in silence. 

“Well that worked,” Lucifer offers with a shrug. “Breakfast anyone? Or perhaps some flaming mojitos? Tequila smallsword with a flame grilled garnish?”

“Lucifer no,” Chloe rolls her eyes.

* * *

“Mooooom I’m home.”

“We’re outside Monkey!” Chloe calls back. “How was school?”

And oh yeah. That’ll be why Daniel was gone; his turn for the dreaded school run. 

“Ugh, you would not believe what Stacy said to Aharon at lunch time mom. She’s such an aaah…actual terrible person. And she stole his kippah again! Hey Lucifer- Wait, what are you all doing out here?

“Do I even want to know?” Dan sighs with tired, weary resignation as he follows the spawn. 

“Ella threw her flaming sword in the hot tub,” Lucifer grins at him.

“Nope. Nope, I did not want to know,” the other man groans with closed eyes.

* * *

“So you look like shit Luci,” the spawn tells him with a look. They’ve all trooped back inside, leaving the offending blade underwater for the time being. Chloe and Dan have traipsed off to the kitchen to have yet another frantic whispered conversation. Linda is busy rearranging all the appointments she had to cancel today, and Ella is… somewhere. Doing… something. Hopefully calling them all in sick. Again.

Lucifer has chosen to flop onto the couch and has buried his face in one the cheap cushions that have appeared in the last two years. True to form, Beatrice had trailed after him like a forlorn hellhound and flopped on top of him. He’s noticed it absently before, but the fact that she’s grown like a weed while he was away is extra noticeable right now as her knees dig into his thighs much lower than they used too. 

“It has been a rough few days urchin,” he grumbles, unsuccessfully trying to shift his weight to tip her off his back. “Endless centuries of boredom in hell immediately followed by two weeks of utter manic bullshit… I need a dozen stiff drinks and a few lines of cocaine while your mother is sat next to me.”

“Drugs bad, talking good,” Beatrice says in a dreamy, false voice. “We cannot snort our problems away children! But we can chat them to death!”

“Sipping my scotch occasionally is one thing spawn, but I will not be allowing you to sample any other substances until you’re at least eighteen and fully understand the dangers and consequences. Your mother killing me for it would be the least of my concerns.”

“Satan I do not want to do drugs. We live above the premier nightclub in LA, I have seen first-hand how messed up that shit can make you.”

“Well actually it’s quite fun if you do it properly,” he protests, finally managing to roll over and tip the child into the back of the couch while she giggles.

“You also think winding my mom up is fun, so excuse me if I ignore your opinion on that one,” she rolls her eyes. “Now tell my what I missed while I was babysitting Maze at Ella’s.”

“You’re a demanding little beast, aren’t you?” he mock-scowls as she settles back atop him, her elbows now digging into his chest lightly as she cradles her chin in her palms. 

“But you love me anyway, so spill.”

(He preens a little at that, amazed at the way she just casually mentions it as if it’s a basic fact of life. And he does, he knows now. He _does_ love the little hellion.)

“Fixed Linda’s problem, had a breakdown or three, bon Appetit.”

“A breakdown or _three!?” _ Beatrice whines. “I only left you alone for one night!”

“Linda went rooting around in my head!” he protests, wondering how the hell he’s ended up arguing with the midget again; he never wins, much to his resignation.

“What, like literally?”

“Yes, literally you hellfiend. With her sticky telepathic therapist fingers.”

“No way…” she gasps. 

“Oh so let me see. Your mother turned into an angel, you’re now part demon, and the douche occasionally displays ghost like qualities, but it’s the telepathic abilities that are stumping you?”

“Eh, Dad’s a little weird but angels and demons are old hat. Telepathy though… Can she hear the thoughts of vampires?”

“What? Vampires? They don’t exist!” he scoffs, pulling a face at her.

“Really? Davy is gonna be so disappointed.”

“You’ve known that I’m the devil since you were seven! Why by the me would you think _vampires_ are real!? And please stop shuffling! Your elbows are hurting my nipples!”

“One,” Beatrice says impetuously. “Exactly. I was seven and just seen confirmation that the devil existed. If _that_ myth was real, then all the others probably were too. Plus, it’s not like I’ve ever actually sat and quizzed you or Maze about it.”

“And two?” he prompts, smacking her still wriggling elbow with distaste.

“And two. Put a shirt on, you sloth monster. Then your precious nipples will be fine.”

“It’s my building! I can wear as much or a little as I like in-!”

“What the hell are you two doing?” Chloe interrupts them, suddenly leaning over them with her hands on her hips and her patented mom glare.

“Nothing!” they both chant at the same time.

“Sure,” she drawls, entirely disbelieving. “Pull the other one. Come on, get up and get on with your homework monkey. And you can drop the innocent act too Lucifer; you’re a walking mischief magnet even when you’re not actively trying to be.”

“I think you’ll find I’m lying down, not walking,” he grins at his Detective cheekily as Beatrice finally climbs off of him.

“Your physical position has nothing to do with your ability to create trouble,” she points out with a raised eyebrow. “You only have to _think_ about something weird happening and it’ll happen.”

“Yes, well…”

He trails into sudden horrified silence, eyes going wide with realisation.

* * *

“It’s me,” he repeats, pacing up and down the rug in front of the TV anxiously. “It’s been me the entire dad-damned time!”

“Explain,” Chloe bites out with equal worry. She’s sat side by side on the couch with everyone else that’s been affected by him the last week, all of them huddled in front of him in a line.

“I think it and it happens!” he yells, one hand tugging harshly on his hair. “I start believing that the Detect- that Chloe is the most divine being in creation, and she becomes an archangel. I wonder why the Doctor always seems to know what I’m thinking, and she starts being able to read people’s thoughts! Beatrice is as cunning and sneaky as Maze, and she starts shadow crawling! Daniel! Okay I don’t know what I did to you, but I remember joking that you must already be dead to survive not breathing when you were blubbering in the precinct carpark!”

“And last night you said that I could will a flaming sword into existence with my raw willpower if I wanted to!” Ella gasps. “And then this morning I did! Wait! Let me try again!”

“Ella don’t!” Chloe cries in alarm.

“Oh yeah, I shouldn’t have done that,” the forensic scientist admits weakly as the sword does indeed burst into existence in her hand. Ignited. Alarmingly close to Beatrice’s face.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry! _Soy un jodido idiota!” _ She curses as she runs out to the balcony again, arm extended. 

“It’s all my fault,” Lucifer croaks as he watches her rush off again. “It’s all my bloody fault!”

* * *

“No. No, we can handle this,” Chloe repeats for the fourth time, nodding resolutely. “We just need to work out what changed for you while you were away in Hell.”

“I sat on a throne atop a giant stone obelisk for a few centuries mostly and yelled at some demons occasionally,” he grimaces with a shrug, still standing in the middle of the rug. “I didn’t even fly down and torment any of the souls personally if I’m honest- And I always am so…”

“A few centuries!?” Chloe blurts with wide eyes. “Nope, not thinking about that. We are not thinking about your age or earth-hell time differentials, nope.”

“I _did_ go down to my old citadel sometimes to make sure the demons were behaving themselves and doing their jobs properly,” he adds, nervous in the face of her outraged outburst. “I tended to fly back up to sleep though. Harder to get stabbed in the back when you’re a mile or two above everyone else. And they were all pretty angry and stab happy for the first 80 years or so.”

“Ella can we take Lucifer off the rota altogether?” Chloe asks, sounding faint. “Maybe make Michael cover his slots?”

“Yeah. That’s happening,” Ella nods, looking at him unhappily. “I think Ezekiel is the one before Lucifer on the list, but maybe I can get Gabriel to talk to him about swapping with Michael so that his sulkiness is not doing two weeks in a row. Or I could… anyway, I’ll sort it.”

“Ella, no sweetie. Don’t do that,” Linda suddenly winces, looking at her disapprovingly.

“It would totally work! Probably?”

“Did I miss something?” Daniel enquires weakly. He still hasn’t stopped looking at them all with an edge of fear in eyes, though Lucifer acknowledges that sitting with them quietly at all is a massive improvement from yesterday.

“Ella thinks very loudly,” Linda replies with a hysterical edge. “And she has ideas on how to use that sword Lucifer…. Gave her?”

“Forced upon her unintentionally more like,” he grumbles back.

“Hey! It’s a very cool sword bro! Also terrifying, very terrifying. But my little nerdy soul will get over that because summonable freaking flaming sword guys!”

“My wings are pretty neat,” Chloe shrugs, obviously trying to start a theme going. “And we already established that being a bullet proof super strong cop is never gonna be a bad thing. And even if I do get hurt, I’ll heal really fast now, right?”

“Uhhhh, working with difficult patients is going to be so much easier now,” Linda groans in appreciation, catching on. “I mean, bit of an ethical and moral dilemma? But I’ll work it out.”

“Teleportation,” Beatrice sing songs with a sharp grin, her eyes flickering to solid black for a second.

“What? Don’t look at me?” Daniel grumps, folding his arms and slumping in his seat.

“You can phase through walls and objects and people like Shadowcat from the X-men Dad,” the spawn rolls her eyes. “Think of all the suspect houses you can break into without getting a warrant with zero evidence. Oh wait! We have to see if you show up on cameras when you’re in ghost mode! _And_ if anyone tries to tackle you or hit you, you can just stop being solid so nothing lands.”

“Fine,” Lucifer sighs dramatically. “It’s not all bad. But that’s not the point! I did this without asking you! I forced you all to change! I _violated_ your free will!”

“Hands up if you feel violated,” Ella deadpans.

No one moves, not even Dan. 

“See, totally fine Hermano!”

“But- But I-”

“Babe, I keep telling you, _we’re all fine,” _ Chloe smiles at him, climbing to her feet and walking towards him. He stiffens as she pulls him into a hug, but she just keeps gently holding him and eventually he gives in and relaxes.

“Look Lucifer,” Linda says in her therapist voice. “I’ll say what I always say to in these situations. _You shouldn’t blame yourself for things beyond your control.” _

“But I literally am the one controlling it!” he protests meekly.

“Did you give yourself the power to change people with your belief?” she continues. “Did you know that it you had that power until just now? No, you didn’t. So everything that’s happened has been out of your control.”

“What’s she’s trying to tell you son, is that you should stop blaming yourself for everything.”

Lucifer chokes and shoves Chloe behind him as those words roll over them.

Because by the balcony doors…

Stands his Dad.

* * *

“Oh fuck,” Dan splutters.

Lucifer cowers back, trying to cover as much of Chloe with his body as possible.

Beatrice’s eyes go wide and she grabs Linda’s wrist with a snap and then winks the two of them out of existence. 

Ella-

“Eres inútil, cobarde, bueno para nada, _monstruo sin espinas!” _ Ella spits, stomping towards _his Father(!)_ with anger in every line of her body. “I believed in you and your eternal goodness for _years! _ And it was all a _lie! You’re_ the one who deserves to be banished to Hell for all eternity!”

“Ella!” Lucifer yelps in panic, torn between trying to stop her and staying where he is between Chloe and _ actual God. _

His Dad just stands there though, with his loose pale brown curly hair and searing blue eyes. Hands unclenched at his sides and a benign smile on his face. 

“Please don’t stab me Miss Lopez,” he says abruptly. “Obviously it’s never been tested, but I believe that blade of yours could well actually kill me, and I have some amends to make first.”

Ella stops in front of him, and Lucifer gulps hard.

Then he watches with a slack jaw as she rams her knee up into his father’s groin.

* * *

“Okay. Okay I deserved that,” God gasps a long moment later, still doubled over.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Ella says faintly, seeming to come back to her senses now that her initial burst of anger has run its course. “Did you give me super strength too Luci, or-? Oh. Oh shit. _Oh shit!_ I just-! Oh _fuck!_ please don’t smite me!”

“That would rather defeat the purpose of my coming here,” God winces, _still _not standing upright again. “Kiddo, could I please sit down because that really fucking hurt?”

Lucifer still can’t get his mouth to close or his vocal cords to work.

Of course that’s the moment that Chloe chooses to stride determinedly round him, march up to his Dad too, and full on slap him.

* * *

“Yep,” God groans, rolling his neck and massaging his jaw. “Deserved that one too. Espinoza, you want a crack as well? Might as well get this all over with at once.”

“No I’m good thanks,” Daniel whispers back, white as a sheet and frozen in his seat.

* * *

Lucifer finally finds his voice.

“Get the bloody fuck out of my house!” he roars, snapping into motion himself. His Dad rolls his shoulders and braces himself but doesn’t move.

He doesn’t move and takes the punch square across the nose, staggering back into the glass behind him while Lucifer stands above him and pants, raw with seething anger.

“Fucking years!” He yells, furious hot tears building along his lashes. “EONS! _YOU THREW ME INTO HELL BECAUSE I LEARNED WHAT LOVE WAS AND WANTED TO BE ABLE TO CHOOSE IT!” _

Lucifer’s next thrown fist goes through the balcony door with a shattering cacophony. 

_ “I BURNT! I SCREAMED AND I BURNT AND I BEGGED!” _ he bellows, fire flickering into his eyes but his body miraculously not changing. _ “I FELL AND I BEGGED AND_ YOU IGNORED ME!”

The doorframe cracks under the weight of his grip.

_ “I JUST WANTED LOVE!” _

And then he breaks and sinks to his knees.

“I just wanted love,” he whispers.

* * *

He sobs.

He sobs and cries for everything he lost.

* * *

“I’m sorry kiddo. I just- It finally occurred to me a few thousand years ago that I’m a raging hypocrite and that I’d been a conceited arrogant bastard. Only by that point it’d been too fucking long to do much about it except play the long game and put in actual effort to fix things. _S aoiveae,_ I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough Dad,” he wails. “Sorry will _never_ be good enough!”

* * *

He slowly becomes aware that he’s wrapped in wings once again, and that Chloe’s scent and presence is filling his senses. He shakes with exertion, emotions in tumultuous freefall. Arms are wrapped around him, and warm, safe bodies press against him from both sides. 

He’s crying in Chloe’s embrace, his Dad cradling his head against his chest in front of him. 

“I just wanted love Dad,” he whispers again. 

“I know son,” God sighs mournfully. “I know and I’m sorry.”

And because he’s God, Lucifer knows that he’s finally telling the truth.

* * *

He knows that they need to talk. Eons and eons of misunderstandings and old hurts and hatreds need to be lanced and cauterised. 

He’s just so tired of it all. 

Tired of sustaining the hate.

For all that he wants to, for all that he always professed to do exactly that, Lucifer finds that he can’t actually hate his Dad. He’s learnt too much, grown too much, and discovered the lengths he would go to himself to protect the ones he loves to do that now. 

Will they ever see eye to eye? Probably not. Really, very definitely not.

But to his own complete surprise, he finds that he wants to push past that and work through their animosity anyway. After all, Chloe couldn’t stand him either once and now look at them. Entwined together tighter than the strands of DNA that form them both.

Do they sometimes annoy the ever loving shit out of each other? Oh absolutely, but he wouldn’t change anything about their relationship for the world.

Maybe he could build up a similar rapport with his Dad?

Maybe-

Maybe the Devil can finally forgive God for his sins.

* * *

* * *

* * *

“Beatrice,” he moans. “It’s not even 7am.”

“Get up Satan.”

“I loathe you most ardently.”

“No you don’t.”

“At this moment in time?” he gripes, trying to pull the bed sheets back up to his neck. “Yes, yes I absolutely do.”

“But I want a cooked breakfast!” she whines in his ear. “I came back from college for the weekend especially for it!”

“You’re nineteen, do it yourself you wretched child.”

“Monkey leave him be,” his other half mumbles tiredly as she shuffles out of the en-suite bathroom, gleaming wings trailing behind her.

“But mooooom, I want devil pancakes!”

And with that, the diabolical little hell spawn shadow crawls away and takes all the damn bedding with her.

“Darling,” Lucifer whimpers. “Is it really that wrong to hate our child? She’s evil!”

“Yes it is. Now go feed her before she disowns us both,” she smiles fondly at him, pulling up his hand to kiss his knuckles.

* * *

“Gooooood morning brother!”

“No cheerfulness before coffee Gabe,” he mumbles, padding into the kitchen in just his boxers and a well-worn silk robe. 

“Well drink up quick then, because father said he’d drop by and give you another creation lesson.”

“Uhhhh,” he moans with feeling, titling his head back. “But I’ve got an active case waiting on me! A juicy triple murder! Three poly partners all with the same bullshit note written on torn out bible pages shoved into their mouths!”

“Shit like that genuinely makes me want to reconsider my none-interference policy,” God scoffs like a teenager as he winks into reality by the fridge, folding his gleaming golden wings away with a well-practiced shrug. “After I cleaned up the mess your mother left with that great flood and the damn animal arc in the middle east, I swore I was gonna leave the humans alone. But sometimes it’s just so tempting to correct the more assholish behaviour. I mean I’ve tried nudging them with the odd Prophet since then I suppose, but it’s not actually that hard to understand that love is love, you bunch of over advanced apes! I didn’t coax you all through evolution just for you to forget that! Stop being dicks to each other!”

“Morning Grandpa!” Beatrice chirps cheerfully, crawling next to Lucifer, stealing his steaming mug from his hands and then vanishing again.

“Beatrice Joanna Espinoza-Decker!” he yells in outrage “Get back here right now before I smite you!”

“Ahhh, they grow up so fast!” God sighs happily.

* * *

He breathes in deep, concentrating on the ball of energy that always feels like it’s floating in his chest.

“That’s it kiddo, gently does it.”

Pulling on the ball carefully with his mind, he spools a portion of light off of it and pushes it out into his fingertips.

With another thought, a wicked curved knife forms in his hand.

“A demon blade? Really son!?”

“It’s for Maze Dad!” he protests as he releases the remaining energy and opens his eyes. “She’s my friend! Mostly… And Linda says she’s been growly all week since Michael stole her favourite pair of leather boots to give to Azazel! Speaking of, I want it made very clear right now that it was not my idea for Michael to try and court a demon. He started that idiocy all by himself.”

“Will that boy of mine ever learn,” God rolls his eyes – an expression that he’s picked up from Chloe over the years. “Goodness knows how he ended up your twin. Oh wait, you’re as bad as each other!”

“I resent that remark,” he grumbles, closing his eyes and going for the energy ball again.

_Now,_ he thinks, _What would Chloe like? _

* * *

Lucifer can change the people around him with his beliefs alone. 

It’s a literal gift from God.

He has a handle on that side of his new power now and hasn’t accidentally altered anyone’s genetic makeup or state of reality since the time he turned Daniel’s new girlfriend into a rocket scientist. He’s still working on the something from nothing side, but you can’t do that part without actively trying at least.

(Charlotte sent him a thank you card via Amenadiel for that bit of match making. Daniel sobbed into his shoulder for almost an hour when Chloe told him about it).

On Tuesdays his Dad drops by for tacos; it’s an extended-family meal night now, but which ones of his siblings show up is always potluck (aside from Amenadiel and Gabriel, the latter of which basically lives with them now. They’re guaranteed regulars). 

God also shows up at random other times of the week and makes Lucifer practice meditating and force feeds him celestial physics, much to his horror.

_Can’t have the power of creation unless you understand what your creations will affect…_ His Dad repeats every time he complains. Because of course that’s (one of) his Dad’s apology present(s); giving him the power and ability to become his equal in every way. Training him to be God 2.0. 

Lucifer thinks his Dad has lost his bleedin’ marbles to perfectly honest, but only Linda can literally read his thoughts so that secret’s safe. 

(Probably.)

(He’s also told Chloe a few dozen times and she has a tendency to tease him and deliciously wind him up. Delightful most of the time because it normally leads to hot, steamy sex, but occasionally…)

(Father damn him a second time, he’s so stupidly, hopelessly in love)

* * *

The energy in his fingers coalesces into a pair of high karat white gold rings set with infernal blood stones.

In three weeks’ time, he’s finally getting married. 

Gabriel and Amenadiel are his best men, the sneaky little heart-worming-into feathered rats. Eve is the maid of honour (Maze outright refused the position apparently, though she did consent to be a bridesmaid with Linda once Chloe said she could still wear leather).

Azrael is… something. He thinks she wants to be a groomsman? With eight-year-old Charlie? He’ll let her be whatever the heaven she wants so long as she keeps Michael in line like she promised.

Ella’s officiating. With the sword. Beatrice has been teaching her LaVey style Satanism too, so goodness knows how the ceremony will go.

And Lucifer?

Lucifer is finally happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it!
> 
> Points of interest:  
\- If you don't know CPR, please go learn it. Even Lucifer has look ;)  
\- Contrary to popular belief and how it is depicted in the show, most satanists don't actually believe in God or the devil, and it's not devil worship. Satanism is essentially just a set of principles that show you how to live as a moralistic and ethical hedonist with a side of giving Christianity the middle finger for being hypocritical and intolerant (much like an emotionally mature Lucifer tbh lol). Simply put "Do what the fuck you like so long as you don't hurt anyone".  
\- I tried to look up enochion for this fic, but the vocab only consists of like, a few hundred words tops. So I just slammed together what few words I could find.  
\- There is nothing wrong with eating triple chocolate cookies for breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> consistent chapter lengths are also for sensible people. I'm still not one of those.
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://insane-sociopath.tumblr.com/) I take prompts and post a lot of space pictures.


End file.
